First and only edition of a beautiful work on Swedish traditional dress. The work contains 12 large chromolithographed plates depicting different scenes from Swedish life, including a wedding, herring fishing, a baptism, a horse market, and the interior of a hut in Lapland. Each plate is accompanied by a long description in Swedish, German, and English, which explains the scene in detail. The plates and text together offer a fascinating insight into life in the Swedish countryside in the middle of the 19th century.
The text was written by Johan August Berg (dates unknown). The plates were lithographed by Arnz & Co. in Düsseldorf, after designs by Bengt Nordenberg (1822-1902), Killian Zoll (1818-1860), Josef Fredrik Höckert (1826-1866), Josef Wilhelm Wallander (1821-1888), and Gunnar Brynolf Wennerberg (1823-1894), who were all well-known Swedish painters specialising in genre scenes. Nordenberg, Zoll, and Wennerberg were members of the Düsseldorf school of painting, which was part of the German romantic movement.
With the original wrappers bound in. The edges and corners of the boards are somewhat scuffed, the boards are somewhat scratched and rubbed. Internally very clean. Colas 299, Hiler & Hiler, p. 81; Lipperheide 1051; WorldCat 8775734, 186279646, 556861540, 1106927973, 252036331, 1106996454.