When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Paris, 1790
Everything a French country estate had to know, and the best plates are the bees
La Nouvelle Maison Rustique, ou Economie Rurale, Pratique et Generale de tous les Biens de Campagne; Donnee ci-devant au Public par le Sieur Liger: Onzieme Edition, revue, corrigee et considerablement augmentee. Tome Premier. A Paris, Chez Bailly, Libraire. M.DCC.XC.
The plates are the reason to want it, and the best of them are about bees. One shows the queen, the drone and the worker enlarged beside hives of a dozen shapes; another an apiary with skeps ranked on shelves; a third a swarm being taken from an apple tree, one man raising a skep on a pole while others beat pans to bring the bees down; a fourth the combs broken up and the honey pressed out. After them come the candle works and the shed where wax was bleached.
The rest range as widely as the text: a model farmyard on the frontispiece, a dovecote in section, sheepfolds, a horse with its points marked, cattle, trays of silkworms with the cocoons and a woman reeling silk, a page of implements and carts, ploughing under Labor omnia Vincit, a sower, the harvest, hemp and flax being retted and spun, and an oil mill with the press being turned. Several carry a tag from Virgil\'s Georgics under the image.
The text covers land, building, woods, meadows and vineyards, livestock, fields and gardens, rural law, hunting and fishing, botany and apothecary, then La Cuisine et l\'Office and the country trades. Bound in contemporary calf, raised bands, the spine ruled in gilt with a red morocco label lettered MAISON RUSTIQUE. This is Tome I alone; the set calls for forty two plates across two volumes. About 10 x 8 x 2.25 inches.
Good. The text block is sound and clean, the paper strong with light age toning, and the plates well impressed. The binding is holding, the boards firmly attached and the label legible. The calf is heavily worn, cracked and flaking, with loss at the head of the spine and along the board edges and corners where the pasteboard shows through. The plates appear complete for this volume, but we have not collated them against a plate list.
Free shipping, free no questions asked 30 day returns (within USA), International Shipping program to other countries.
