Highlights

BAILLY, Jean-Sylvain. Histoire de l'astronomie ancienne, depuis son origine jusqu'a l'établissement de l'École d'Alexandrie.
Paris, Debure brothers, 1775. 4to. With 3 numbered folding engraved plates. Beautiful contemporary gold-tooled red morocco, each board with coat of arms of Simon-Pierre Merard de Saint-Just in the centre, marbled endpapers. In modern slipcase covered with marbled paper. [2], XXII, 526 pp. Full description

BERTHOUD, Ferdinand. l'Art de conduire et de régler les pendules et les montres: a l'usage de ceux qui n'ont aucune connoissance d'horlogerie.
Paris, for the author and Michael Lambert (colophon: printed by H.L. Guerin and L.F. Delatour), 1759. 12mo. With illustrations on 4 folding engraved plates. Contemporary mottled calf, gold-tooled spine. XVI, 78, [2] pp. Full description

BLAEU, Joan. Vyfde stuck der aerdrycksbeschryving, welck vervat Schotlandt en Yrlandt.
Amsterdam, Joan Blaeu, 1654. Atlas folio (57.5 x 39.5 cm). With an engraved architectural title page with the arms of Scotland filling the top half, elaborately crested, supported by unicorns with flags and still with the old Stuart royalist mottos, and 55 engraved maps (54 double-page and 1 of the Irish County Caterlogh, full-page), often richly adorned with additional cartouches with regional scenes, but most often with coats of arms from the region. Numerous woodcut tailpieces and decorated initial letters. The title page and all maps, including the cartouches, scenes and coats of arms, beautifully coloured by hand and highlighted with gold. All maps in their first states, without added ships or compass roses. 17th-century Dutch gold-tooled vellum. [8], 189, [1 blank], 70, [1, 1 blank] pp. Full description

BLAEU, Joan. Grooten atlas, oft werelt-beschryving, in welcke 't aerdryck, de zee, en hemel, wort vertoont en beschreven.
Amsterdam, Joan Blaeu, 1664-1665. 9 volumes. Imperial folio (55.5 × 36.5 cm). With 9 engraved title pages, an engraved frontispiece and 610 engraved maps, views, plans, etc., mostly double-page (53.5 × 64 cm, plate size ca. 42 × 53 cm), 7 larger folding, a few single-page and a few smaller, many including additional inset maps, plans and views, and decorated with coats of arms, human & mythological figures, animals, produce, etc. With the engraved title-pages, frontispiece, other engravings (except for the compass rose and 2 inscriptions), woodcut devices on 4 title-pages and 1 woodcut initial coloured by a contemporary hand (the maps mostly in outline but with their decorations fully coloured) and some (mostly the engraved title-pages) with extensive use of gold. Contemporary gold-tooled vellum. Full description

BLAEU, Willem Jansz. Zeespiegel, inhoudende een korte onderwijsinghe inde konst der zeevaert, en beschryvinghe der seen en kusten van de Oostersche, Noordsche, en Westersche schipvaert. ...
Amsterdam, Willem Jansz. Blaeu, 1627. 3 parts in 1 volume, parts 2 and 3 consist of 6 books each. Folio. With 108 numbered engraved charts, 2 half-page engraved charts, 2 volvelles, a woodcut vignette on the divisional title page of each part, and numerous woodcut illustrations in the text. Contemporary overlapping vellum. The work is preserved in a gold-tooled half red morocco clamshell box, with two green morocco title labels, lettered in gold, red buckram sides, and a green felt lining. [16], 64; 39, [1], 43, [1], 48, 32, 28, 24; 32, 52, 46, 43, [1], 40, 23, [1 blank] pp. Full description

BONHOMO, Gabriele. Automatum inaequale sive horologium antiquum automatis animatum. Opusculum sanè perutile, ac pro rei novitate jucundum, in quo multiplex datur. Hoc nondùm excogitatum automatum condendi methodus. ..
Palermo, Francisco Valenze, 1747. 4to. With numerous woodcut head- and tailpieces and decorated initials, some tables in the text and 15 numbered, folding engraved plates showing timepieces and clockwork mechanisms. Contemporary mottled calf, gold-tooled spine. [8], 122 pp. Full description

BRETEZ, Louis. Plan de Paris commencé l'année 1734. Dessiné et gravé, sous les ordres de Messire Michel Etienne Turgot, Marquis de Sousmons ... Achevé de graver en 1739.
[Paris, 1739]. Grand-Aigle folio (56 x 45.5 cm). An enormous engraved map of Paris in 20 numbered sheets plus a key map, at a scale of about 1:2000, each segment measuring 55 x 84 cm (plate size 51.5 x 80.5 cm; image 48 x 79 cm) which would give an assembled map with image size about 240 x 316 cm! The key map is slightly larger than the segments and folds out at the head. Bound as an atlas (but with segments 18 and 19, containing the cartouche, assembled to make a long fold-out) in contemporary gold-tooled red morocco, each board with as centrepiece the Paris coat of arms (a ship with chief a field of fleurs-de-lis). Full description

[CORDOBA, Antonio de]. Relacion del último viage al Estrecho de Magallanes de la Fragata de S.M. Santa María de la Cabeza en los años de 1785 y 1786. Extracto de todos los anteriores desde su descubrimiento impresos y MSS. y Noticia de los habitantes, suelo, clima y producciones del estrecho.
Madrid, la viuda de Ibarra, hijos y compañía, 1788.
With: (2) [CORDOBA, Antonio de]. Apéndice a la relacion del viage al Magallanes de la Fragata de guerra Santa Maria de la Cabeza, que contiene el de los Paquebotes Santa Casilda y Santa Eulalia para completar el reconocimiento del Estrecho en los años de 1788 y 1789.
Madrid, la viuda de D. Joaquin Ibarra, 1793. 2 works in 1 volume. 4to. With an engraved frontispiece portrait of Magellan by Ferdinand Selma, dated 1788, 4 large engraved folding maps, and 4 folding tables in ad 1; an engraved folding map and a folding table in ad 2. Contemporary gold-tooled mottled Spanish roan, with a red morocco title-label on the spine lettered in gold, gold-tooled board edges, marbled endpapers. [6], XVI, 359; [4], 128 pp. Full description

FERNANDEZ DE ENCISO, Martin. Suma de Geographia que trata de todas las partidas y provincias del mundo: en especial de las Indias.
Seville, Jacobo Cromberger, 1519. Folio (27.5 x 19.6 cm). 17th- or 18th-century vellum over boards, manuscript title on the spine. 75 ll. Full description

FLEURIEU, Charles Pierre Claret, Count d'Eveux de. Voyage fait par ordre du Roi en 1768 et 1769, à différentes parties du monde, pour éprouver en mer les horloges marines inventées par M. Ferdinand Berthoud. Première[-seconde] partie, ...
Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1773. 2 volumes. Large 4to (27 x 20.5 cm). With 5 numbered folding engraved plates in volume 1 (4 maps of the Atlantic Ocean, the Canaries, the Azores, etc., and 1 plate with topographic diagrams), 1 folding engraved plate with geometrical figures illustrating the determination of latitude[!], and 5 folding letterpress tables in volume 2. Contemporary gold-tooled mottled calf. [2], LXXIX, [1 blank], 803, [1 blank]; [2], 622, XL, [2 blank] pp. Full description