A MISCELLANY AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
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UNITED KINGDOM

London : Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1948. First edition. A short history of Egyptian, Roman and Venetian glass, followed by full sections on composition and properties (including colour; plant; manufacture (cut glass, pressed glass, window glass, plate glass, tubing, optical glass, etc.), products and uses, etc. The numerous illustrations include photographs of glassware from the "Britain Can Make It" exhibition of 1946. With a bibliography.
Demy 8vo (23cm). xii,274,[ii]pp. Illustrations. Original cloth; mild discolouration of edges of covers, but otherwise a very good copy.

£20

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London : for the Author [Ebenezer Sibly], and sold at the British Directory Office; and by Champante & Whitrow, [1794]. The third edition of the 1789 reworking of Culpeper by Ebenezer Sibly (1751-1799) – infusing the most popular and durable of English herbals with Sibly’s own distinctive blend of astrology, occultism, natural magic and empirical science – a mixture of old and new beliefs characterised by the dating of the preface to the Year of Masonry 5798. Published in parts (and hence giving rise to an unusually unstable collation), the work was affordable and highly popular – reaching a fourteenth edition under Sibly’s name by 1813. The second volume comprises a “Family Dispensatory”, with anatomical diagrams of nerves, muscles, arteries, etc., as well as two rather fine plates engraved by Prattent after Dodd demonstrating “the celestial influx on the human frame”.
Two volumes, bound in one. Post 4to (257 x 200mm). xvi,398 [i.e. 400]; [ii],256pp. Portrait frontispiece. Twenty-nine plates showing “upwards of four hundred and fifty different plants”. Thirteen anatomical plates. Bound in a later (late twentieth century) half imitation morocco; marbled sides; some light rubbing; some internal marks, nicks, spots, scuffs, a short tear, and other signs of use, with some occasional larger and darker stains, but overall a good, sound and serviceable copy. From the library of the distinguished illustrator and architectural historian Geoffrey Fletcher (1923-2004), with his 1981 ownership inscription, as well as the earlier inscription of William Charlton of James Street, Adelphi.

£250

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London : Faber & Faber, (1937). First edition. “The amusement to be obtained from a simple yet ingenious puzzle, and the pride of quickly solving it, sets up a well-being far more important in keeping the doctor away than any number of apples”. A brain-teaser (with some nice seasonal touches) for every day of the year (not forgetting leap-years) – with solutions at the end – and hints on how to tackle similar problems.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (232)pp. Diagrams, etc. Original pale blue cloth, lettered in red; a little sunned; some spotting, mainly of edges; a good copy in the striking dust-jacket by Edward Bawden (1903-1989) – the jacket a little chipped and slightly tanned, but essentially complete and a most uncommon survival. A few internal pencil marks perhaps suggesting less than assiduous application to the problems by a previous owner.

£75

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London : George Routledge & Sons, [ca.1885]. A fresh edition of Pepper’s extraordinary compilation, first published in 1861. A richly illustrated account, aimed primarily at “youthful readers” – but evidently quite sophisticated ones – of mining and metals. With individual chapters on coal; alchemy; gold; silver; lead; copper; tin; mercury; iron; aluminium; antimony; arsenic; barium; bismuth; cadmium; calcium; cerium; chromium; cobalt; donarium and others; magnesium; manganese; molybdenum; nickel; niobium and others; potassium; platinum; palladium and pelopium; rhodium and ruthenium; sodium; strontium; tantalum, titanium, and others; tungsten; uranium and others; zinc; zirconium, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,(504)pp. 300 illustrations. Original pictorial cloth gilt over bevelled boards; all edges gilt; a touch dulled; some rubbing and wear; endpapers cracking; a few spots, but a serviceable copy. Gift inscription dated Christmas 1885 from Henry C. Embleton to R. R. Drake – the Yorkshire mining engineer Henry Cawood Embleton (1854-1930) and Rowland Ramsay Drake (1869-1891).

SOLD

[London : Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1939]. First edition. A comprehensive view of the world of the pre-war sweet-shop, toffee-hammers, dorothy bags and coconut ice – with material on stock, ordering, window displays (with some wonderful plates), serving, staff, accounts, fitting and layout, tax, insurance, and the additional lines (cigarettes, ice cream, biscuits and books – with eleven pages on running a library).
Demy 8vo (23cm). [iv],332,[iv]pp. Plates. Diagrams, Tables, two folding. Original cloth; some minor spotting to edges and lower cover, but overall a very good copy.

£20

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London : John Wallis, [ca.1800]. A race-game in spiral form, with an accompanying sheet of directions – the game featuring 100 numbered or pictured spaces from the start (the first space is a prison) to the winning laurel wreath at the centre. For simple addition just one teetotum was used, but for subtraction, multiplication and division, two were in play – the product of which governed the next move. Some fiendish forfeits include requests to repeat (from memory) the long measure table (three barley-corns = one inch), the dry measure table (four bushels = one comb), the wine measure table, the ale measure table, the avoirdupoise [sic] table, etc. Difficult wholly to see the amusement measure in all this, but evidently a popular game in its day, with a version known dated 1791, another dated 1798 on the slip-case (which, like the present example, was printed by Biggs & Co. of Crane Court) – and later versions to at least 1820.
Copper engraving, aquatint and letterpress on paper, with original hand-colour. Two sheets, each 316 x 348mm (approx. 12-1/2” x 13-3/4”). Dissected and mounted on canvas. Some minor wear, marking and slight creasing, but in very good order for a scarce and ephemeral production. A couple of indistinct manuscript annotations to lower border.

SOLD

London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1968). First British edition. “Watson, 40, is American. He was a gangling, crew-cut, Anglophile student of twenty-two when he went to Cambridge and met Dr. Francis Crick. Two years later they had solved the problem of DNA ... But the discovery was not made by supermen. In London yesterday Watson, whose book reveals the failings, foibles and petty jealousies of many scientists still well known in Britain, spoke of the bumbling way in which the discovery was made” (Daily Mirror, 16th May 1968).
Demy 8vo (23cm). xvi,(236),[iv]pp. Illustrations. Portraits. Diagrams. Facsimiles. Original purple boards, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge lilac; a very good, clean and sound copy in the Dorothy Judd dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped, and with some minor wear to extremities, but also very good.

£125

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London : Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown; and J. Mawe, 1820. First edition. A concise and well-organised study by the London music-master, neatly classifying the multivalves, bivalves and univalves, giving instruction on cleaning and preservation, etc. Illustrated with some exquisite hand-coloured plates, depicting sixty-three species.
Post 8vo (196 x 115mm). xxiv,(120),[iv],[2]pp. Four etched plates, all with delicate original hand colour. Bound in an elegant recent half red morocco, ruled, tooled and lettered in gilt; very mild offsetting from plates; small mark to first plate, but otherwise a very good copy. Ownership inscription of George Wood, dated 1890.

£250

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