Gallery of Fashion

by HEIDELOFF, Nikolaus Wilhelm von (1861-1837)

Price: $9,000.00
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London: Heideloff, 1796-1798 [plates dated April 1796 - September 1798]. Vols. III, IV and part of vol.V only in one vol., quarto. (11 1/2 x 9 inches). 2 pp. list of subscribers at end of vol.III and 1 p. at the end of vol.IV. 3 hand-coloured aquatint titles, 60 hand-coloured costume plates, some heightened with gold or silver. (Occasional spotting, the first title and first plate lightly creased). Contemporary tree calf (worn). A selection from the "most splendid of English costume books, and the first real venture in this country of a periodical devoted to the changing taste in dress" (Abbey) Volumes III and IV complete, with title, text and plates to vol.V from April to September 1798 (i.e. 12 of the total of 24 plates, with the required text ). Many of the excellent hand-coloured plates are heightened with touches gold and silver, and are notable for their fine backgrounds and incidental details. "A Gallery of Fashion is a work long wanted, and long wished for, and now makes its appearance upon a very extensive plan. It is a collection of the most fashionable and elegant Dresses in vogue. This work, so necessary to point out the superior elegance of the English taste, is the first and only ever published in this country; it surpasses any thing of the kind formerly published at Paris, and shews at once the different fashions invented at different periods; in short it forms a Repository of Dress. The Publisher will make it his particular study to select those magnificent dresses, in which the Ladies appear at the routs, the opera, the play-houses, and the concert-rooms; as well as those elegant morning dresses for Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Several Ladies of rank and fashion have not only approved this plan, but they have at the same time granted permission to the Publisher to make drawings of their new dresses, and to insert them in this Gallery; thus the credit of the invention of the different dresses, will be secured to those Fair Subscribers who contribute to the embellishment of this work (if they have no objection to their names being mentioned). And they will find the Publisher always ready to represent their dresses in that style of elegance, and that original taste, which is so peculiar to the British Ladies. This Gallery will not only be interesting to Ladies of the highest fashion, but must be deemed absolutely necessary to every person concerned in the fashions of the day. It is likewise submitted to the admirers of the fine arts, as an agreeable series of objects, for the imitation of those Ladies who wish to mix entertainment with improvement." (Advertisement, at front of vol.I). Abbey Life 218; Colas 1170; Lipperheide 4578; Tooley (1954) 258

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