Shop

[The Sahara Railway between Gabes and Sudan and Its Evident Correlation with the Commercial Interests of Italy]   An unusual pamphlet, written by an Italian engineer Leone Paladini and printed in Cagliari, Sardinia, advocating a Trans-Saharan railway, connecting Gabès in Tunisia with towns in today’s north Nigeria.   Small 8°, 64 pp. original green wrappers with lettering, later spine (minor…

[Growing Roses and Extracting Oil] A rare Ottoman illustrated manual on rose cultivation and making of rose oil by an author from Karlovo, now Bulgaria, one of the centers of rose oil production Small 8°, 48 pp. with black and white illustrations, original illustrated wrappers, bound in a later marbled paper wrappers (paper slightly age-toned and fragile with small chips…

A very rare and sophisticated work of data visualization celebrating the long and eventful reign of King George III, which saw Britain become the foremost global superpower, at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution; composed of series of centric circles that chronologically contextualize a vast amount of information, prepared by the London engraver Nathaniel Rogers Hewitt for the popular publisher…

A charming advertisement in a shape of a pear, composed of Islamic calligraphy, for the subscription of two Ottoman newspapers in Ruse, Bulgaria.   Colour lithography, 47,5 x 36 cm (18.7 x 14.2 inches), (little age-toned and stained, minor loss of white margins, overall in a good condition)

Very rare – a stellar example of Hüseyin Hüsnü Emir Erkilet’s map of Palestine, a large separately issued work predicated upon field surveys made by Ottoman and German military engineers during World War I, all brought to print on a single map for the first time; issued in Istanbul in 1921 by the Army Press, it was the very last…

A beautifully executed mid-19th century watercolor view of the foothills of Himalayas with snowed mountain range in the background.   Water-colour drawing, 34 x 49 cm (13.4 x 19.3 inches) on J Whatman wove paper, mounted on later paper (little sun-toned and with light staining and foxing, one tiny hole in the center of one of the stains, but overall…

Marifetname or Book of Gnosis - a majestic encyclopedic work in Ottoman language, printed by the Bulaq press in Cairo.   Large 4°: 23 pp., 564 pp. letterpress with lithographed illustrations, original brown goat with a flap and blind tooling, title in thick blue colour on the lower edge (Sporadic markings of text in apricot water colour, annotations in pencil…

  Very rare and historically significant - a gorgeous unsophisticated example of the first Nama (Khoekhoe) language primer and one of the earliest language primers published in Sub-Saharan Africa, the subtitle of which translates as ‘Shouting Together and Reading Book’; Nama, a non-Bantu language with its signature ‘click consonants’ is spoken by the Nama, Damara and Haiǁom peoples who are…

A very rare and intriguing ethnographic map showcasing ‘Schwäbische Türkei’ (Swabian Turkey), the region of southwestern Hungary that since the late 17th century had been home to a large enclave of German Settlers (‘Donauschwaben’), who were imported to the region by the Austrian Habsburgs to revive the agrarian economy in the wake of the eviction of the Ottomans; the ‘Donauschwaben…

A Armenian language edition of the first thematic atlas of Armenia; one of the most impressive and engaging works of Soviet scientific cartography, featuring 97 full-page, full-colour plates of sophisticated maps plus diagrams covering virtually all aspects of the geography, geology, economy, transport and demographics of the Armenian SSR; predicated upon years of careful research and draughtsmanship by the Armenian…

The most consequential map of Namibia made during the German colonial era, a gigantic 8-sheet work that is the first broadly accurate general map of what was the protectorate of Deutsch-Südwestafrika of a scale sufficient for operational use, compiled in great haste but with considerable skill, at the ‘Kolonial-kartographischen Institut’ in Berlin by the master cartographers Paul Sprigade and Max…

Extremely rare – a large format, separately issued map that is one of the earliest printed masterplans of Brazil’s ‘Novo Distrito Federal’, containing the city of Brasília, which would become Brazil’s capital in 1960; Brasília was an ‘ideal planned city’, designed in the shape of an airplane following the ‘Plano Piloto’, with its main public buildings being Modernist architectural masterpieces;…

A charming rare pamphlet with religious text in Armenian language, printed by the Mekhitarist Press in Trieste.   12°, 98 pp. with vignettes and illustrated initials, later marbled paper wrappers (mispagination without pp. numbers 43-44, but complete and corresponding to the example from the National Library of Armenia, tear in the lower inner corner of the title page repaired with…

A rare first edition of an Armenian novel by Mesrop Taghiadian, printed in Calcutta.   12°, [4 pp.] blank, [6 pp.], 177 pp., [5 pp.] blank, original green wrappers, later spine (two tiny wormholes in margins in the first part of the book, light brown ink lines on the title pageotherwise in a good condition).  

A milestone of children’s education in the Ottoman Empire – the first printed Ottoman primer and the first primer with modern educational methods for teachers.   Large 8°, 68 pp. lithographed text with blank page after the front wrapper probably counting as p. 1, original illustrated pink wrappers, yellow sheet with printed instructions and black cut outs bound after the…

A pair of books with 27 handsome colour woodcuts, showcasing various patterns of chintz, wood block printed or painted glazed calico textile panels, made by a Japanese artist Ryuko Goto and published in Kyoto in 1903. 2 volumes (complete), large 4°, reverse collation, original illustrated wrappers, originally bound with brown strings. Vol. 1: Guard, title, 14 colour woodcuts on double…

1 of only 2 known surviving examples - the original issue of the French merchant Charles Jeannest’s exciting and historically valuable account of his four years (1869-73) spent in the coastal Congo (today’s Banana, DRC and Zaire Province, Angola), where he served as a factor at several trading posts, featuring authentic and highly detailed eyewitness accounts and perceptive analysis of…

A charming unique collection of original drafts, collages, photographs and negatives for book covers and book advertisement, made in the late 1950s by a Turkish illustrator and designer Ayhan Başoğlu, today known for his comics and drawings of heroic figures.

  A set of 30 issues of an unusual Tatar magazine published in Constanța, Romania, for the Crimean Tatar minority, which moved to the territory of today’s Romania during the Russian famine of 1921 and fleeing the Soviet government's collectivization in 1928–29.  

A rare detailed wall-map of the Caucasus, printed in Tiflis and drafted by Military Topographic Department of the Caucasus Military District under the leadership of the prolific surveyor Hieronymus Stebnitsky  

  A rare pamphlet in Ottoman language on the Dönme, a group of Sabbatean crypto-Jews in the Ottoman Empire, centered in Thessaloniki. 8°, 32 pp., original wrappers with lettering, later spine (light staining and small tears in margins, but otherwise in a good condition).

  [al-`Urāḍa fī l-ḥikāya al-salğūqīya / The Gift from the History of the Seljuks / Das Greschenk aus der Saldschukengeschichte]   A rare first printed publication of an important 14th century historical work on the Seljuk Dynasty, written in Farsi, was a groundbreaking work of a German famous orientalist Karl Süssheim, which gained him a professorship at the University of Munich.…

A rare first Ottoman Book on Darwinism, printed in Bitola.   8°. 200 pp. with three interleaved images, [4 pp.], contemporary brown embossed covers, red label with gilt lettering in Ottoman on the spine, endpapers with art nouveau pattern (little age-toned and stained, binding slightly rubbed on corners, but otherwise in a good conditon).

Very Rare – a remarkably astute treatise on cholera accompanied by an amazing 462 case studies of named patients written at the height of the Cholera Epidemic of 1833-4 in Portugal by the respected physician Emigdio Manoel da Victorio da Costa, who selflessly tended to infected persons on the front lines; the work remained in manuscript for many years, until…