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London, Henry Bohn, 1843. 55x36. 2 chromolithographed title leaves + 2 leaves with lists of plates + X pp. + 81 lithographed plates (including 74 tinted and 3 chromolithograph), each with one leaf with explanatory text. Rebound in fine half brown morocco with the original 19th-century spine labels reattached. A fine set of these impressive volumes on Italian church architecture. After completing his studies at Eton and Cambridge, Henry Gally Knight (1796-1846) travelled extensively in the Mediterranean and the Near East. In Italy he was accompanied by the architectural draughtsman George Moore, who prepared most of the lithographed perspectives of early churches and chapels all over Italy, from drawings of his own and of Domenico Quaglio's and some other Italian and English artists' - an attractive view of Orvieto is from a drawing by Edward Lear. The chromolithographs (the title leaves and three plates of mosaics) were prepared by Owen Jones.

Milano, Edizioni del Naviglio, 1969. 24x20. An album leporellofolded into 40 card leaves including 27 pages with colour pochoirs and 10 pages with text. Kept in massive blue boards, front board with decorative white title design. No. 194 of 500 copies printed on velin Aussedat, from a total edition of 650 copies. Presentation copy with a signed inscription by Sonia Delaunay dated 17-12-70. Modernist costume designs originally created by Sonia Delaunay 1922-1928. Celebrated in writings by Jean Cocteau, Tristan Tzara, Blaise Cendrars, and others, Delaunay's innovative and daring costume and fabric designs formed an influential feature of modern art and are known to have influenced the work of Paul Klee. The album includes text by Jacques Damase, excerpts from texts by Guillaume Apollinaire, and a poem by Blaise Cendrars. An excellent copy of an exquisite publication.

Venetia, Domenico de Francheschi, 1570" (actually Venice, Pasquali, 1768). 34x24. Four engraved title leaves + II +64+76+44+ II (blank) +132 pp. Includes 217 engravings (158 full-page) besides the engraved titles and a tail-piece on last page. Early 19th-century half calf with decorated spine. The renowned edition of Palladio's Magnum Opus printed at the Pasquali press in Venice at the initiative and expense of Joseph Smith. The title page provides the impressum of the first edition of 1570, and the contents corresponds with the original in most respects - except that the illustrations (and title leaves) are copper engravings instead of woodcuts. Joseph Smith was a merchant who had settled at the age of eighteen in Venice, where he was appointed British Consul in 1740. He made a reputation as a collector of drawings, pictures, books and manuscripts, a patron of artists, and a passionate Palladian. In 1729 he prepared an edition of Boccaccio's Decamerone - so nearly an exact reproduction of the rare 1527 edition that only those acquainted with the minute differences can distinguish the copy from the original. The 1768 Palladio, however, was obviously not intended as a facsimile - rather, it is the attempt of an 18th-century Palladian to reprint the editio princeps with the possibilities of modern printing techniques, thus presenting Palladio's drawings with a clarity, sharpness and elegance much superior to the crude woodcuts of the original. Berlin cat. 2593.

London, Griggs, 1905. 50x36. Pictorial title frontispiece + decorated title leaf + 20 pp. text with ornamental borders + one map + 138 plates numbered I-CL (137 chromolithographed colour plates including twelve folding plates with double numbers, and one collotype photo plate) + 7 plates with drawings (key plans) numbered IA, XIIA, LVIIIA, LXXIIA, LXXVIA, LXXXA, LXXXIIA. Kept in a fine ashen.green cloth box with white lettering. Enay / Azadi 265. Thomas Hendley's last publication, documenting the magnificent old carpets in the Royal Jaipur collection. Although the origin of the carpets was a bit of a mystery, some of them had long been familiar to Jaipur residents; highly and justly admired, they were even lent to nobles and other courtiers for marriage festivities. According to one theory, they had been brought as spoils of war from Herat in the 16th century; a rival theory regarded them as a gift from the Emperor Shah Jahan. In 1865, however, a chance discovery by Hendley indicated that they had been commissioned by the Raja of Amber from Moghul workshops. In 1893, Hendley had the carpets photographed, but it was not until 1903, when he was supplied with a set of coloured drawings made by Jaipur artists showing details of the carpets, that he felt he had adequate material for a suitably splendid work, which was issued by his publisher Griggs two years later. Hendley's intentions was not only to record a magnificent historical collection, but to influence a wide range of industrial art, announcing that "it is hoped that the reproductions will be useful in many ways besides the manufacture of carpets".

Leningrad 1935. 30x21. 102 pp. + 101 plates with colour renderings. 101 small-size and 12 full-page black and white designs in the text. Title leaves in Russian, German, French, and English. Publisher's blind-lettered cloth, spine slightly faded and darkened, lacks the Russian title leaf; contents in clean very fine condition. The last and most spectacular of the Chernikhov books published during his own lifetime, illustrating his utopian visions of modern architecture with greatest brilliance. As a Constructivist he was possessed by the powers of abstraction and geometry, but his singular, expressive designs go far beyond mere constructivism in visionary ingenuity. For Chernikhov, fantasy drawing offered the architect an effective means of liberating himself from convention, to imagine a future reflecting the avant-garde culture of the new Soviet Union. But his unusual ideas were distrusted by the Soviet regime, and the Architectural Fantasies was one of the last avant-garde art book to be published in Russia during the Stalinist era. "Architectural fantasy stimulates the architect's activity, it arouses creative thought not only for the artist but it also educates and arouses all those who come in contact with him; it produces new directions, new quests, and opens new horizons. Architectural fantasy in all cases propels the culture of architectural problems, and with the freshness of new thoughts, with the transition to new phases of architectural creativity, it serves as the best aid in real design work. We also use the help of architectural fantasy in finding a form for presenting architectural representations, in finding images of architecture, in finding the basics with whose help architectural style of our epoch is crystallized." (translated from Chernikhov's text). Senkevitch 205.

Romae 1761. Folio. 2 engraved title leaves (Latin and Italian titles) + one leaf with dedication + portrait of Pope Clement XIII engraved by D. Cunego after Piranesi + 212 pp. (including four engraved initials and tail-pieces) + 38 engraved plates (12 folding including 8 double-plates and 4 quadruple-plates). With the supplement: OSSERVAZIONI SOPRA LA LETTRE DE M. MARIETTE ... Roma 1765. Folio. Engraved title leaf + 24 pp. (including six engraved head- and tail-pieces) + 3 engraved plates (the first lettered Essais de differentes Frises...) Six additional unnumbered plates not present in this copy). Fine later half brown morocco. An excellent copy with the plates in early, sharp and vigorous imprints. As the champion of Roman originality and primacy in design against the fashionable hellenism of the mid-eighteenth century, Piranesi imbued his work with a fervent didactic and polemic purpose. Styling himself "Architetto Veneziano" his concern was enduringly with the science and magnificence of ancient Roman building, but he brought to his depictions of it a Venetian consciousness of the variety and expressiveness of light, and an appetite for the rococo sharpened by the capricci of Tiepolo. In Della Magnificenza ed Architettura de Romani he claimed the superiority of Etruscan arts to that of the Greek, arguing that the Etruscans were the original instructors of the Roman, his point brought home with lovingly elaborate illustrations of imaginative and varied Roman ornament. In the supplement, the Osservazioni, he refutes the theories of the French critic Mariette who in 1764 attacked Piranesi's theories about the Etruscans.