Interesting nineteenth century scrap album

[Scrap Album with Celestial Plates].

Natural History, Science & Medicine
  • Publication place: Handsworth
  • Publication date: 1840-1860s.
  • Physical description: Tall folio (580 x 340 mm), 158pp, rebacked in tan calf, original boards refaced with blue paper matching original.
  • Inventory reference: 2967

Notes

A remarkable album scrapbook, comprising of prints, watercolours and drawings, cut and arranged on coloured sheets. The subjects range from botany to famous buildings to notable clergymen.

There are a series of pages with celestial subjects. Prints of the terrestrial and celestial globe are accompanied by hand drawn representations of the planets, meteors and the orbit of the moon and earth around the sun. A dark blue page is full of tiny hand coloured reproductions of the zodiac from countries including India, Egypt and Greece.

Inclusion of constellations Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, French astronomer, observed and catalogued 10,000 southern stars while at the Cape of Good Hope, all but one honouring instruments from the Age of Enlightenment

Provenance

Inscription on front pastedown reads “Collected by Sh. My. Butler” in 1840, bookplate of 1812 inscribed by same, bookplate of 1925 of E.A. Dearn, an Australian magician.

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