Sales catalogue 4: Lathorp C. Harper, Inc.

Date:
20th century
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/52/121
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue 4: Lathorp C. Harper, Inc. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/40 page 17
    Neither Lacombe, Brunet, nor Bohatta list any Livres d’Heures printed by Jean du Pre’s widow. Claudin I, p. 283, note 2, mentions an unrecorded edition of 1506, but does not know ours. 41. HORAE in Dutch. Die ghetijden van onser lieuer vrouwen. [With the Almanac for the years 1509-1520]. 124 leaves, printed in red and black. With Kerver’s large mark on title, 15 full-page and 21 smaller wood- cuts, the ‘Occupations of the Months” and the “Signs of the Zodiac’ in the Calendar, and woodcut and metal borders round every page. Octavo, six- teenth-century blind-stamped calf over wooden boards, more recent armorial stamp in center, two clasps (rebacked). Paris: Thielman Kerver, 16 November 1512. $375.00 Complete, uNcoLorED copy of a fine Book of Hours in the Dutch language. These interesting books were published by the Paris printers for sale in the Netherlands and are particularly rare, the few editions known survive mostly in single copies. The calendar at the beginning and the Litany are both according to the use of the diocese of Utrecht; the entire text, even the little verses underneath the little scenes in the borders, is in Dutch. The border pieces contain all the finest sets used by Kerver in his early period and are mostly still purely Gothic in style. Title slightly frayed and torn, some marginal repairs; otherwise a well preserved sound and complete copy of a splendidly printed and illustrated Book of Hours. Not in Bohatta, Lacombe or Brunet. NljHOFF—KRONENBERG 3087 (one incomplete copy in The Hague). 42. HEURES de Verdun [in French; with the Almanac for the years 1515-1530]. 100 leaves, printed on paper. Vostre’s device (second state) on title, the skeleton on the second leaf, 14 large full-page woodcuts without borders and 9 smaller cuts with borders; every page (except those occupied by the large cuts) surrounded by delightful ornamental and historiated border-pieces, many on criblé grounds, representing the well-known hunt- ing scenes, the Dance of Death, and innumerable others; rubricated through- out. Quarto, old vellum gilt, the center panels supplied from a sixteenth- century richly blind-stamped German pigskin binding. Paris: for Si- mon Vostre, ca. 1515. $600.00 Complete, uncolored copy on paper of one of the rarest and most beautiful Books of Hours for the use of Verdun produced for Simon Vostre in quarto size. This is an outstanding French woodcut book of the early sixteenth century. “The remarkable cuts [14] belonging to set 4 are distinguished from their prede- cessors by their large size (quarto, and on that account not requiring a border), and, compared with the criblé set, are still further departures from the old canon of book illustration. Introduced here are all forms of shading—criblé, cross, line, etc.—the use of all these methods giving an appearance of solidity to the pictures which was
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