PHILADELPHIA
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Design Manual, Used by a
Female Philadelphia Art Student?
Peale, Rembrandt. Graphics, the art of accurate delineation; a system of school exercise, for the education of the eye and the training of the hand, as auxiliary to writing, geography, and drawing. Philadelphia: E.C. & J. Biddle, 1853. 8vo (18.7 cm, 7.4"). [6 (adv.)], xvii, [1], 22, [2], 27–132 pp.; 41 plts.
$175.00
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• Later edition of a best-selling guide to drawing and draftsmanship, published by Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), the noted American Neoclassical painter. The volume is illustrated with
41 plates depicting various aspects of line production and calligraphy.
Provenance: This copy bears an early inked inscription reading “School of Design S.E. Cr. of 8th and Locust” — that address having been one of the earliest locations of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, now the Moore College of Art.
• Contemporary quarter black sheep with black ribbed cloth–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title; spine much rubbed, corners and edges far less so. Front pastedown with inscription as above. Pages and plates clean. (27050)
Pennsylvania.
Collection of the penal laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia:
Pr. by Budd & Bartram, for the use of the Prison, 1801. 8vo (19.5 cm, 7.6").
72 pp.
$1000.00
Click any image where the hand appears on
mouse-over, for an enlargement.
• Scarce: Only the second such collection of Pennsylvanian criminal laws and legislation, following Zachariah Poulson’s first of 1794. The unspecified prison for which Budd & Bartram printed this work was almost certainly the Walnut Street Prison, in operation from 1773 through 1838 and one of the earliest American penitentiaries as well as a groundbreaking experiment in humanitarian incarceration. At the time of this volume’s publication, the prison reform movement was flourishing in Philadelphia.
Many institutions report microform holdings, but very few hold actual copies.
• Sabin 59986; Shaw & Shoemaker 1114. Contemporary-style quarter tan cloth over blue paper-covered sides, spine with printed paper label. Paper embrittled and somewhat fragile; pages age-toned and foxed.
We
Are in Production!
Pennsylvania
Society for the Encouragement of American Manufactures.
A communication from the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of
Manufactures and the Useful Arts. Philadelphia: Pr. for the Society by Samuel
Akerman, 1804. 8vo (21.3 cm, 8.375"). 28 pp.
$300.00
• Founded to "promote the manufacturing interest of our country"
in 1787, the Society sent out this communication giving its constitution and
list of officers with a report on the present state of manufacturing in the
United States. This includes a discussion of growth in domestic raw materials
and manufactures—with some detail as to items whose production has increased—and
reports decline in the need for imported materials and manufactured goods. The
whole ends on a note at once self-congratulatory and restrained: Things are,
happily, "in most respects very considerably better than . . . at the first
establishment of the Society."
Tench Coxe was the publishing President, Peter A. Browne, the Secretary.
• Shaw & Shoemaker 7024; Sabin 60367. Publisher's plain blue
wrappers, soiled. Dog-earing, with a few chipped corners; some soiling and
foxing.
Local
Sericulture
Pennsylvania
Society for Promoting the Culture of theMulberry,
and the Raising of Silk Worms.
Directions for the rearing of silk worms, and the culture of the white mulberry
tree. Philadelphia: Clark & Raser, 1828. 8vo. 25, [1 (blank)] pp., fold.
table.
$400.00
• No sooner had this sericulture society founded itself with a constitution than it published a handbook for the would-be worm raiser. 
The instructions on cultivation of both trees and worms are clear and extensive. The society also here announces prizes ("premiums") for the greatest quantity of thread made from silk raised in Pennsylvania; for "the greatest quantity of good cocoons, raised within this state"; and "for the largest number of the best white mulberry trees, raised within twelve miles of this city." There were also prizes for lesser quantities in those same categories.
• Shoemaker 34706. Recent quarter off-white cloth, old style, with plain blue-green paper sides. Five-digit number stamped on title-page. Light dust-soiling. A very good copy.
UncommonFranklin Press Production
Philadelphia Baptist Association. A Confession of faith, put forth by the elders and brethren of many congregations of Christians (baptized upon profession of their faith) in London and the country.
Philadelphia: Printed by B. Franklin, 1743. Small 8vo (14.5 cm; 5.75") 112 pp., [1] f., 62 pp.
[SOLD]
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• Bill Miller, the great Franklin bibliographer, writes of this work: “This Confession, approved by the Baptist congregations meeting in Philadelphia Sep. 25, 1742, had first been set forth about 1643 in London and was reaffirmed in 1689. At the Philadelphia meeting in 1742, the Association approved the idea of having a 'treatise of church discipline' written by Benjamin Griffith.” That latter work has an added special title-page: “A short treatise of church-discipline. Philadelphia: Printed by B. Franklin, 1743.”
This sixth edition of the Confession of Faith has yet another addition: “Of imposition of hands and Singing of Psalms in publick worship.”
Provenance: 1930s bookplate of John Clyde Oswald, author of (among other biblioworks) Benjamin Franklin, Printer (1917) and Printing in the Americas (1937).
• Evans 5124; Miller, Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia Printing, 317; Sabin 61497; Hildeburn, Pennsylvania, 811; ESTC W037515. Griffith has its own Evans citation: Evans 5194. 19th-century half black roan in imitation of morocco, abraded along front joint (outside) and edges of the boards; signed with blind-embossed stamp, “Turner Hamilton, Binder, Philadelphia.” Bookplate as above. Three leaves torn with varying degrees of loss of text: pp. 21–24 (in fact all readable with confidence except for one word), 33–34 (text approximately half missing). Age-toning and spotting; abrasion to rear pastedown. Far from a “perfect copy” and priced as such, certainly a copy withvery pleasing provenance. (26032)
This Philadelphia Bank's
Articles of Association
. . .
Philadelphia [National]
Bank. Articles of Association of the Philadelphia Bank. Philadelphia:
Pr. by William W. Woodward, 1803. 8vo. 11, [1 (blank)] pp.
$1100.00
• Sole edition and very rare. The bank was capitalized with $1,000,000, aimed at making loans to merchants and farmers, and drew its original 16 directors from the powers that were in Philadelphia at that time, both Christian and Jewish.
• Shaw & Shoemaker 4846. Sewn as issued. Waterstaining to lower margin of most pages; mildew damage to same areas.
. . . and Its Incorporation
Philadelphia [National] Bank. Pennsylvania. Laws, statutes, etc. An act to incorporate the Philadelphia Bank. Philadelphia: Pr. by W. W. Woodward, 1804. 8vo. 21, [1 (blank)] pp.
$800.00
• The legislature enables the Bank to come into existence and prohibits conflicts of interest by barring sitting governors and legislators from serving on its board of directors. This act of incorporation seems to be as rare as the Bank's Articles of Association.
• Shaw & Shoemaker 7007. Original light boards covered with marbled paper. Back cover and two leaves gnawed by a rodent, with loss of paper.
For more COMMERCE / TRADE /
FINANCE / ECONOMICS, click
here.
FRIEND-ly Memorials, Male & Female
(Philadelphia). Society of Friends. Memorials concerning deceased Friends: Being a selection from the records of the Yearly Meetings for Pennsylvania, &c., from the year 1788 to 1819, inclusive. Philadelphia: Pr. by Solomon W. Conrad, 1821. 12mo (19.1cm, 7.5"). 184 pp.
$100.00
• Collection of biographies of devout Quakers, with a special emphasis on their virtues, sufferings, and deaths, published for the edification of the faithful. This work gives an interesting insight into Quaker piety—its simplicity, high moral tone, and reliance on inward inspiration.
• Shoemaker 5412; Sabin 47736. Contemporary treed calf, worn around the edges, joints cracked and front cover very loose. Spine worn, with chipped red morocco title label. Pp. 91–92 chipped on lower corner; some foxing. Now housed in a simple acid-free phase box (label shown in horizontal image above).
We
have a page DEDICATED to the
FRIENDS/QUAKERS — click
here.
Early
AMERICAN Law Book
“Practitioner in the law.” The Young clerk’s magazine: or, English law-repository: containing, a variety of the most useful precedents of articles of agreement, bonds, bills, recognizances, releases, letters and warrants of attorney, awards, bills of sale, gifts, grants, leases, assignments, mortgages, surrenders, jointures, covenants, copartnerships, charterparties, letters of licence, compositions, conveyances, partitions, wills, and all other instruments that relate to publick business. With necessary directions for making distresses for rent, &c. as the law between landlord and tenant now stands. To which is added, the doctrine of fines and recoveries, and their forms. Together with those of common writs, affidavits, memorials for registering deeds, &c. in Middlesex; as also a choice collection of declarations in the King’s bench and common pleas. Philadelphia: Reprinted [from the London edition] by John Dunlap and Joseph Crukshank, 1774. 12mo. [2] ff., 303, [1 (blank)] pp.
[SOLD]
• First American edition of a wildly popular English law vade mecum for the common man and the law clerk. The title-page labels this the “fifth edition, revised and corrected” but that is totally misleading for it is not the fifth edition printed in America, nor the fifth edition overall, nor the fifth revised edition; the puffing “fifth” is simply there to convey that this is a book that many have purchased and therefore “you should too.”
The English and Dublin editions all give as the author on the title-page, “Practitioner in the law,” but the American editions omit it.
Provenance: Ownership inscription on front fly-leaf: “Michael Conrad, October the 1st, 1785.” Later in the Theological Library of Bucknell University (bookplate), and from that collection transferred to Ambrose Swasey Library of the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School (its stamp on bottom edge). Deaccessioned.
Uncommon in commerce.
• Evans 13786; Hildeburn 3140; ESTC W21104. Contemporary tan sheep, dry, joints cracked. Ex-library: call number on binding, bookplate on front pastedown, rubber- and pressure-stamps, pencilling on verso of title-page. Some spotting, not a great deal; a dried flower laid in. Now sporting a cranberry-colored paper jacket and housed in a red cloth clamshell case with cafe au lait-colored spine labels. (24514)
Illustrated
Primer — “do
not lash the cat” — Philadelphia,
ca. 1860
Pretty
stories in easy words. Philadelphia: Davis, Porter & Co.,
[ca. 1860]. 16mo (13.3 cm, 5.25"). [2], 13–18 pp.; illus.
$300.00
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• Scarce juvenile basic reader illustrated with six hand-colored wood engravings, with
the front wrapper additionally hand-colored; the hand-coloring is quite nice.
Uncommon:
OCLC and NUC Pre-1956 locate only four holdings, all in the
U.S.
• Publisher's printed paper wrappers, front wrapper with early inked inscription in
upper portion; paper just starting at foot of spine. Age-toned, otherwise clean and fresh.
(25501)
Tips fromthe Prince of Ventriloquists
Prince, Arthur. The whole art of ventriloquism. London: Will Goldston Ltd., [1922]. 8vo (18.3 cm, 7.2"). Frontis., 100, [4 (adv.)] pp.; illus.
$150.00
• Second edition, revised, with a color frontispiece portrait of the author: Guidelines to throwing one's voice, imitating accents and tones, and using a dummy. The work is illustrated with numerous interesting anatomical diagrams, images of dummies and their inner workings, and room layouts for optimal performance effect.So many and various are these illustrations that we SIMPLY couldn't decide which to photograph!
Click the images present, for enlargements.
Provenance: Front free endpaper with inked ownership inscription dated 1943 and with rubber-stamp of Kanter's Magic Shop, a famed but now-defunct emporium in Philadelphia.
• Publisher's gray-brown cloth without dust-jacket, front cover with black-stamped title and dummy vignette; spine very slightly darkened, edges and extremities with minor shelfwear. Front free endpaper as above. Pages age-toned. A nice copy. (26622)
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