Rare books, manuscripts, music, ephemera…
20th February 2020
No catalogue on Anglo-German cultural relations would be complete without at least one mention of Prince Albert and the Great Exhibition. One of our favourite things in the catalogue is item 191, a very rare and attractive Great Exhibition souvenir. Taking inspiration from the popular nursery rhyme ‘The House that Jack built’, the large cotton […]
Read more
18th February 2020
Of the Werther-related items in Anglo-German Cultural Relations, item 37 stands out as particularly striking and visual: a group of three etchings with stipple by Bartolozzi after Bunbury and Ramberg, each illustrating a scene from the novel. Goethe’s influential novel first appeared in English, via a French translation, in 1779, and soon grabbed the attention […]
Read more
11th February 2020
Also from Anglo-German Cultural Relations: a fine etching by Georg Balthasar Probst of Augsburg, one of the leading producers of perspective views in Europe, depicting the library at the University of Göttingen. The image was copied from one of the plates by Georg Daniel Heumann in the Wahre Abbildung der königl. Große Britan. und Churfürstl. […]
Read more
8th October 2019
One of our favourite reference books here in the office is Altered and Adorned by Suzanne Karr Schmidt, a fantastic look at how Renaissance prints were used in everyday life. An accompanying exhibition was put on by the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. Something Karr Schmidt mentions in her study is the fashion for […]
Read more
18th July 2019
As our readers know, Simon has been enjoying putting out a theatre-themed list during the past few summers, and 2019 will be no different…
Read more
24th May 2019
Printing and illustration processes never fail to interest us, so it should be no surprise that we will be bringing a printing plate to Firsts. This particular plate was presented ‘from the Inventor’ to Sir Francis…
Read more