Picturesque Representations Of The Dress And Manners Of The Chinese; Illustrated In Fifty Coloured Engravings With Descriptions by Alexander, William - 1829

London: W. Lewis for James Goodwin, 1829. leather_bound. Contemporary strait-grained red morocco. Aeg. Very good. Unpaginated. 24 x 17 cm. 50 hand-colored aquatints plates (watermarks to 1829). A comprehensive overview of Chinese contemporary costume and culture, including street scenes, tradesmen, military, entertainers, and the fashionable upper class. The volume's combination of superb draftsmanship and interest in a more comprehensive and historical ethnography of China was in keeping with Alexander's work at the British Museum, where he illustrated catalogues of the institution's collection through an appointment as assistant librarian and the museum's first keeper of prints and drawings. Interior contents, plates and text clean, head cap chipped, modest extremity wear, raised bands, spine panels richly gilt, cover panels in gilt and blind.