Lot 4112 - A210 Books & Autographs - Wednesday, 18. September 2024, 02.00 PM
BOTANIK - Naturselbstdruck -
[Bonnet, Marcellin & Fils.]
[Facies Plantarum.] 88 Plates with colored natural print and with typographic (11 handwritten) labels.
[Carcassonne, 1810.] 41,5 × 25 cm. Half calf binding dated around 1830 with gold gilding traces on the spine and marbled covers and endpapers (slightly rubbed and bumped).
See Nissen BBI 204 - Fischer, Naturselbstdruck (in: Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 1933), no. 97 - Cave, Impressions of Nature, p. 74/75. - Bonnet (1760 - ca. 1821) and his son produced one of the few French series of botanical nature prints, with a precision and aesthetics previously unknown. "The work of the Bonnets is so scarce that it has never reached the attention it deserves from nature printing historians" (Cave). Only few copies of two editions with printed text are known: 3 in-folio books with 15 plates each and 2 pages of text each, 80 plates in quarto with text on the back (Nissen, Fischer). On October 30, 1989, the only known series in the present form was auctioned at Drouot (cat. no. 198) without any text but with characteristic labels: 304 plates that have since been kept in the Bibliothèque Nationale (RES ATLAS-S-50). A short description with a comparative illustration can be found at https://cdn.essentiels.bnf.fr/uploads/media/attachment/20221122140619000000_rarete2.pdf. The essay by Pierre Julien, Un mystère: le Facies Plantarum, in: Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie 1990, pp. 156-158, is somewhat more detailed. Cave states of the technique "inimitable et absolument fidèle" (Julien): "The details of their process were kept secret, but seem to have involved printing in intaglio, with careful colouring of the imge of the leaves before printing." - Prebound: Jean-Henri Jaume de Saint-Hilaire. Mémoire sur les Indigofères du Bengale et de la Chine. With 5 coloured lithographed plates. [Paris 1826]. Folio. Pp. 5-12 (as complete). - Idem. Mémoire sur la culture du Poivrier noir. With 2 coloured lithographed plates (bound after the 43rd natural print plate). [Paris 1826]. 7 p. - Stafleu-C. 3307/08. - Occasionally slightly foxed, upper outer corner of the nature print plate (25) widely bent and heavily stained, plate (35) with watermark outside the image and without label, first text sheet by Sainte-Hilaire soiled. The nature prints overall clean and vivid.
CHF 7 000 / 10 000 | (€ 7 220 / 10 310)
Sold for CHF 10 000 (including buyer’s premium)
All information is subject to change.