Interior Decoration

HOPE, Thomas.  HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE AND INTERIOR DECORATION.

London: Longman, and others, 1807. Folio. Contemporary quarter-morocco, marbled boards. Engraved title page, (ii), 53, (1) pages, 60 plates. First edition.

Thomas Hope, well-schooled in Europe and through his travels to the near and far East, became one of the leading arbiters of taste in Edwardian England.  This book was the first English work devoted to what was to become known of as the Empire style, an amalgam of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Indian, and Moorish design.  It was modeled on the slightly earlier imitation of antiquity proposed by Percier and Fontaine in France.  Hope's book was based on furniture he had designed and had built for his London home on Duchess Street and his estate, Deepdene.  The plates are in the deft linear style popularized by Flaxman.  The first and last few leaves are foxed and their is a slight, barely discernable waterstain to the lower tip; the marbled paper boards are rubbed.  Still a desirable copy in a contemporary binding.

$4,250.00