Olympia-2015

‘No less exciting is the Tafereel as a book […] So strange was the mode of issuancethat no two specimens, even of approximately the same actual issue date, areexactly the same. Neither the textual material nor the engraved prints are alwaysidentical, nor do they appear in the same sequence within the volume; or, at least,they would do so only by the rarest chance. In a sense, each copy of the Tafereel isunique’ (Cole, p. 1f).Offered with this copy are early states of the four letters (a full list is availableon request), referred to by Cole as ‘Part 5’, written to ‘N. N.’. In earlier states of theTafereel, these four quarto units, as here, were tipped in and bound into thevolume. In later printings, they were reset into nine and then ten pages of foliosize. The letters provide an overview of Dutch commercial history from thesixteenth century followed by the detailing on a city by city basis of the manyschemes and companies that appeared in the Netherlands during the summer andfall of 1720. Frans DeBruyn in his article Het groote tafereel der dwassheid and thespeculative bubble of 1720… (Eighteenth-Century Life, Volume 24, Number 1,Winter 2000, pp. 62-87), suggests that these four ‘Brieven’ had been publishedpreviously as separate pamphlets and could provide clues to unravelling themystery of the compiler. (See his article for full discussion).BEATING THE BOUNDS106. [ST GILES’S CRIPPLEGATE]. To the Parishioners of the Parish of St Giles’sCripplegate, London [an invitation and ticket to the ancient ceremony of beatingthe bounds]. Originally engraved by John Sturt in 1709, this example is signedby churchwardens and overseers in 1756-7.Folio broadside, 14 x 8 inches (35 x 20.5 cm), trimmed to plate mark except atlower margin; the plate is headed ‘Ex dono Benj Maddox Barr ti June 1709’ with hisarms, and subscribed J. Sturt sc.; with a large view of St. Giles’s from the south(figures include a strolling couple, a playing boy, and a cripple with his dog) and avignette of Cripplegate; mounted but in very good condition. £650Sir Benjamin Maddox of Wormley, Hertfordshire (d. 1716), founded a charity forfour poor inhabitants of the parish of St. Giles and presented a collection of silverto the church, as well as this plate, which was still used as an invitation to thebeating of the bounds as late as 1860.Rare. Apart from this broadside and the one in the British Museum we have onlyfound two other examples, for 1827 (London Metropolitan Archives), and 1860(source not stated).