RECUEIL DES OUTILS ET MACHINES.

(TRADE CATALOGUE) WERTHEIM, Franz.  RECUEIL DES OUTILS ET MACHINES.

Vienna: 1868. Large folio Publisher's printed portfolio (22 x 14 1/2 inches). Double-paged color frontispiece, color title leaf, 43 lithographic plates, of which 1 double-paged; plus 57 page booklet inserted.

Rare trade catalogue with only one copy recorded on OCLC in American libraries -- at Princeton.  Fine copy of one of the most remarkable trade catalogues ever printed -- a large folio series of forty-five lithographic plates of hand tools, of which twenty-seven are beautifully printed in colors.  To judge by their style, the tools look twenty to thirty years earlier than the date of this catalogue.  The work opens with a handsome decorative title page printed in tints and gold; this is followed by an astonishing double-page color plate of the Wertheim exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1867 -- a huge display cabinet with all the firm's hand tools squeezed in with typically Victorian horror-vacuui). This is followed by twenty-five plates of groups of individual tools, all printed in colors -- many with silver and gold.  As is often the case with the best trade catalogues, the medium, in a sense, "becomes the message."  These plates become works of art in their own right, partly due to the content.  The final eighteen plates are measured drawings (vues geometriques) of tools shown in the preceding color plates.  Laid into the portfolio is a fifty-seven page booklet describing the tools and plates -- essentially the text.  Preserved in a custom-made folding black box.

 

$6,000.00