Magnificent and luxurious shell book with 12 enormous plates showing about 205 finely engraved and beautifully and subtly hand-coloured images of 145 shells of snails, mussels and other shellfish (gastropods and bivalves) painted and engraved by Franz Michael Regenfuss from originals in a large number of royal, private and public collections. Regenfuss's wife Margaretha Helena Ludwig executed most of the colouring, with some figures by Gabriel Müller and Johan Maurits Leyh. It too is executed beautifully and accurately. The book is especially rich in Asian shells ("most" according to Van Benthem Jutting) but also includes West Indian, South African and European examples. They are nearly all marine species, but there is at least one land snail. Van Benthem Jutting notes that the book "appears but very seldom in booksellers' catalogues".
The entire book is the brain-child of the painter, engraver and print seller Franz Michael Regenfuss (1713-1780) in Nürnberg. He began planning what was to become the present book in 1745. Count Adam Gottlob von Moltke, a shell collector and amateur at the Danish court, brought him in 1754 to Copenhagen, where King Frederik V appointed him engraver to the king (though he continued to work in Nürnberg).
The frontispiece and the two vignettes are printed in red, showing that this copy was intended for presentation (the ordinary copies have these engravings in blue). King Frederik V of Denmark had these presentation copies bound with his arms on the boards and spine around the time of publication. Although intended for presentation by King Frederik V ca. 1758, the present copy appears to have remained with the royal family for fifty years until Frederik VI, who bore the same arms, presented it to the Empress Joséphine. The back of each title-page bears the "Huzard de l'Institut" stamp of the Paris book collector, professor of veterinary medicine and member of the Institut de France, Jean-Baptiste Huzard (1755-1838), who tells its earlier history in a note tipped onto an end leaf.
In fine condition, with only occasional very slight browning (for example, in the margins of a few plates), and occasional minor offsetting of the text.
The chemicals used to mottle most fields on the calf binding have damaged the surface in those areas, affecting much of the tooling, and the boards also show a scuff mark and a few minor scrapes and scratches, the turn-ins slightly browned the edges of the paste-downs and the ribbon marker shows a few bleached spots. W.S.S. van Benthem Jutting, "On the conchological work of F.M. Regenfuss", in: Zoologische mededelingen XXXIX (1964), pp. 168-179; Cat. des livres, ... de ... J.-B. Huzard, part 1 (1842), p. 12 (this copy); Cat. Linnean Soc. (1925), p. 461 (Linnaeus's copy); Dance, History of shell collecting (1986), pp. 38-39, 247; Nissen, ZBI 3338.