Catalogue Number 12 - Susanne Schulz-Falster

First and apparently only edition of a rare work on adjuster’s reports; according
to the author, a Grenoble lawyer, the Wrst work on the subject. In
individual chapters Grand-Thorane explains the elements of arbitration,
how adjuster’s reports are drawn up, inheritance appraisals (estimation d’une
succession / compostion de masse en argent) for land, vines, meadows and grassland,
chopped wood, trees for timer, debts, land annuities (rentes foncières)
etc, but also on the assessment of life annuities and usufructs. For this
Grand-Thorane includes extensive life expectancy tables, and some thirty
pages of annuity calculations. The Wnal chapter explains the provisions of
the 1771 edict on mortgages and includes tables showing regional wheat
prices since 1714 and wine prices since 1730.
Very rare, not in Institute of Actuaries, Mansutti or ‘Utrecht’; NUC/RLIN and
OCLC list just one copy at the Library of Congress.
Arts and Technology Illustrated
41 [GUELARD, Jean Baptiste Antoine.] Description Abregée des
Principaux Arts et Métiers et des Instrumens qui leurs sont propres
etc, le tous détaillée par Wgures. Paris, chez Guelard ... et chez la
Veuve de P. Fessard, n.d., [1743]. £1800
Small 4to, ll. 118, (including four of manuscript notes), with 84
engraved plates; engraved throughout, some leaves printed on both
sides, many folded, numbering of text and plates irregular; title-page
vignette, head-piece and some illustrations signed by Guélard, some of
the illustrations after Laury; head-piece on ll. 8 by Le Clerc; title page a
little dust-soiled, else clean and crisp throughout; contemporary full
mottled calf, spine with raised bands, gilt in compartments; upper joint
beginning to split, but holding Wrm, extremities rubbed and corners
bumped, still an attractive copy.
First edition of this fascinating picture encyclopaedia of the industrial arts
and technology, and in particular of the tools used in the individual trades.
After an initial section covering architecture and design, highlighting in
particular the building trade and its tools and equipment, (most of which is
based on Félibien’s De l’Architecture, de la Sculpture, de la Peinture of 1676),
Guelard concentrates on joinery and wood-work, metal-work,
locksmithing, working with lead and minting, printing, engraving, and
book-binding. In most cases he illustrates the tools and machinery, such as
furnaces, watermills, etc, but also printing and engraving presses, and gives
some instructions in the engraved and manuscript text. The work is a very
good source for technical tools used at the time, but at the same time it is
specially designed for the general public, with the purpose of explaining
craft ‘secrets’ and making the artistic crafts intelligible to the layman.
Copies of this book apparently vary in composition, partly indicated in
the erratic pagination; the Getty copy has an additional engraved frontispiece
by Guelard, though this is not present in either of the two British
Library copies. In this copy, two text leaves, which are some times engraved
susanne schulz-falster rare books catalogue twelve
either on separate leaves or on the verso of the plate, are present in a contemporary
manuscript only. The two additional manuscript leaves of this
copy are of the explanatory notes added to the second edition of 1750.
Barbier I 889; RLIN/OCLC list copies at the Winterthur, Getty, Newberry Library,
Library of Congress and California State Library.
Corsican Independence
42 GUELFUCCI, BonWglio. Memoria Apologetica sull’Ultima
Rivoluzione dell’Isola di Corsica. [n.p., n.p.] L’Anno 1760. £900
Small 4to, pp. 60; contemporary buV wrappers, slightly loose.
First edition in Italian, very rare, of Guelfucci’s account of the failed political
experiment of democratic rule on the island of Corsica. Corsica had been
under Genoa’s inXuence from the Wfteenth century. In 1729 the Corsicans
rebelled against Genovese rule, partly because of an excessive tax regime.
The Corsican revolution could be seen as an anti-colonial rebellion, a struggle
of an oppressed nation against those who governed it from afar, and