MOLEVILLE, Bertrand de. The Costume of the Hereditary States of the House of Austria.
London, William Miller, 1804.
£ 1,850
Folio, pp. [vi] xxviii plus 50 colour plates with facing explanations. French and English language. First plate bound as a frontispiece in this copy. Light age-yellowing, bound in contemporary blue morocco, neoclassical tooling to spine and covers in gilt and blind (gilt only on spine), slightly rubbed and bumped. A lovely copy.
One of a series of costume books published by Miller (the other titles comprised costumes of Russia, for which see here below, China and the Ottoman Empire), included in this volume are clothes from Tirol, Hungary, Bohemia, Transylvania, the Dalmatian coast, Moravia, and those of Jews from Poland. The pictures are copied by the engravers William Ellis and William Poole, from a collection which had been recently published in Vienna, called ‘Costumes des Etats de l’Empereur’. Bertrand de Moleville, author of the text, was sometime a minister for Louis XVI.