Rare books from Alembic Rare Books

London & Paris: R. Ackerman; L. Janet, 1822. Hardcover. Very Good. 12mo - over 6¾ - 7¾" tall. 12mo. Original pink boards, printed paper label to spine. Frontispiece and hand-coloured folding plate. Near-contemporary ownership inscription dated 1842. Boards rubbed and tanned at the edges with some small marks and spots, spine browned, ends of spine worn and chipped, corners bumped and worn, a few lights spots to early and late leaves, otherwise contents fresh. A very good copy. First edition of this guide to miniature painting designed for the education of young ladies. The author, Andre Leon Larue was born in 1785 and known professionally as Mansion. The son of a portrait painter, he worked as a miniaturist and also achieved remarkable results as a tinter of photographs during the 1840s and 50s. This was his first book on painting; the second was The Principles and Practice of Harmonious Colouring in Oil, Water, and Photographic Colours on Paper, Glass and Silver Plate. The present volume was… Read More

c. 1900. Carved boxwood desk seal. 850 x 350mm. No monograph to the base. A couple of very minor nicks in the wood, slight wear at the base. Excellent condition. A lovely Art Nouveau desk seal in carved boxwood depicting a spray of flowers. We have been unable to determine the maker, and have never encountered a similar seal.

London: Joseph Johnson, 1787. Duodecimo (155 x 95mm). Contemporary tree calf, spine gilt in compartments, marbled endpapers. 1810 ownership inscription to the verso of the front free endpaper, pencilled notes of a similar date to the verso of the rear blank. Binding lightly rubbed at the extremities, the corner of B6 torn, not affecting the text, light spotting to the contents. Very good condition. Third edition of this charming little book on the changing of the seasons from month to month by the "physician and man of letters" John Aiken (1747-1822) (Hahn, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature). Aiken charming combines practical knowledge of nature and gardening with literary references. For April he writes: "This month gives the most perfect image of Spring; for its vicissitudes of warm gleams of sunshine, and gentle showers, have the most wonderful effects in hastening that universal springing of the vegetable tribes, from whence the season derives its appellation. April generally… Read More

Chicago, 1952-53. Including 3 typed letters signed (one with the signature removed for reproduction in Vistas in Astronomy) and 2 autograph letters signed by Urey. Housed in Beer's tan paper folder with "Urey" in ink on the cover. Just a little creasing to some pieces. Excellent condition. An archive of correspondence between astronomer Arthur Beer and Nobel Prize winning chemist Harold Urey regarding the latter's contribution to Vistas in Astronomy. Beer (1900-1980) was born in Richenberg, Bohemia (later Czechoslovakia), and educated in Austria and Germany. He worked as an astronomer at Breslau University, where he studied binary stars, and at the German Maritime Observatory. He also wrote newspaper columns and was responsible for developing one of the first scientific radio programmes, Aus Natur und Technik. Beer escaped from Germany in 1934, assisted by Einstein, who wrote him a public letter of recommendation, and spent the rest of his life in the UK. He worked at the Cambridge Solar Physics… Read More

Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1824. Hardcover. Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. Octavo. Contemporary quarter black skiver, blue boards, spine gilt in compartments. Engraved frontispiece. 1 leaf of publisher's ads at rear. Spine rolled, binding rubbed, spotting and toning of contents, primarily in the margins. A very good copy. First edition, first impression. Author Constance de Salm (1767-1845) was a highly regarded French writer and moral philosopher, and an important member of a circle of leading intellectuals and scientists. Though forgotten for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, she is now the subject of renewed academic interest, providing a window onto the lives and intellectual networks of women in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. De Salm spent most of her life promoting the equality of women, and her most important work, the poem Épître aux femmes (1797), was a direct attack on the language and social structures that uphold patriarchy, as well as an exhortation to women to liberate… Read More

London: Chappuis, [between 1859 and 1871]. Cabinet card (103 x 62 mm). Photographer's ticket to the verso. Just a couple of tiny spots. Excellent condition. A lovely carte de visite depicting the Crystal Palace in its permanent home at Sydenham sometime after 1856, when the Brunel water towers, one of which is visible in the photo, were erected. The structure was originally built to house the Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations (the Great Exhibition) in Hyde Park in 1851. Popular acclaim saw it preserved and reopened in Sydenham in 1854, but it was destroyed by a fire in 1936. This card bears the ticket of photographer Paul Emile Chappuis (1816-1887), whose Fleet Street studio operated between 1859 and 1871. Chappuis was also an inventor who held several patents on reflectors that would allow light into buildings that would otherwise require gaslights during the day. The firm that he set up to manufacture them was in operation until the Second World War.

Stockholm: Kongl. Boktryckeriet. P. A. Norstedt & Söner, 1890. Tall quarto (300 x 230 mm). Recent burgundy quarter morocco, marbled boards, titles to spine gilt. Title page just a little toned. Excellent condition. First edition of this significant work in which Rydberg lays out the empirical formulae governing the frequencies of spectral lines, a precursor to Bohr's development of the quantum theory. A handsomely bound copy in excellent condition. Johannes Rydberg (1854-1919) was a Swedish physicist at Lund University who studied atomic masses and electromagnetic radiation; inspired by Mendeleev's periodic table, he was convinced that the electromagnetic spectra emitted by atoms could provide insight into atomic structure and theory. "Notwithstanding the imperfect spectroscopic tables then at his disposal, Rydberg discovered most of the important properties of series spectra, including the relation between corresponding series in the spectra of related elements, and foreshadowed discoveries which… Read More

London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Ltd., 1897. Octavo. Original brown cloth, titles to spine gilt, black coated endpapers. Lightly rubbed at the extremities, spine a little rolled and darkened with some minor wear at the ends, contents slightly toned. A very good copy. First edition, first printing. Author Mary Everest Boole (1832-1916) was the daughter of a rector who encouraged her interest in mathematics. At eighteen the logician George Boole became her tutor, and she wrote later that it was his book on logic which made her fall in love with him. In 1855 they were married and moved to Cork, where he was teaching. George encouraged Mary "to attend his lectures and improve her knowledge of mathematics. He read his book on differential equations to her, altering it until the language was completely clear to her" (Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science). Following George's death, Mary became a matron at Queens College and developed an interested in mathematical education. "Her collected works,… Read More

Paris: Robert Laffont, 2012. Pefect bound. Original white wrappers printed in blue and black. With the publisher's wraparound band. Minor bump to head of spine. An excellent, fresh copy. First edition, first impression, paperback issue. Presentation copy inscribed by the author to Nobel Prize-winning biologist Sydney Brenner on the half title, "It has been great to have the chance to know you. Thanks to Gulbenkian! With my admiration and my sincére amitié, these pages about my life in science. Paris, le 26 Juillet 2012, Nicole le Douarin". Gulbenkian probably refers to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, a philanthropic organisation which may have held a conference at which Douarin and Brenner met. Author Nicole le Douarin (1930 - ) is a leader in the field of developmental biology. She has designed important techniques for studying differentiation in embryos, most importantly the creation of chimeras in which cells from two different species can be individually tracked as they develop into organ… Read More

[England, 1982]. Poster (420mm x 580mm). Professionally mounted, framed and glazed using archival materials. White text and graphic of a missile caught in a spider's web superimposed over a grey and red photograph of the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki. Marker pen notes at the bottom of the poster give contact details and instructions for travelling to the camp by bus from Birmingham. Light creases from old folds into four, some slight surface scuffs. Very good condition. A rare poster advertising Embrace the Base, one of the key mass actions at the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. We have been able to locate only two other copies in institutional collections, at the LSE Women's Library and the Glasgow Women's Library. The Greenham Common protest was established in September of 1981 by the Welsh group Women for Life on Earth, who were opposed to the deployment of nuclear tipped Cruise missiles at the site. What was initially planned as a single march became a permanent protest camp in place until… Read More

Cincinnati, OH: The American Products Company, May, 1925. Perfect bound (355 x 280 mm). Original brown wrappers printed in blue and cream, brown cloth backstrip. 78 pages, of which 16 are in full colour and the rest being uncoloured lithographs on single-colour backgrounds. With the original order form loosely inserted. Light rubbing at the extremities, small chips at the ends of the spine. A fresh copy in excellent condition. A beautiful, 78 page chromolithographic catalogue for the American Products Company's Zanol line of cosmetics, food products, and home goods, including 16 pages in full colour. A superb example of Art Deco marketing design. The American Products Company was founded in 1907 by three brothers, Albert, Edgar and Clarence Mihalovitch (Albert later changed his surname to Mills), of Cincinnati, who hoped to capture the growing Midwestern consumer market (see "Cosmetics by the American products Company", Collecting Vintage Compacts blog, January 2012). This catalogue promotes… Read More

Washington D.C.: US Govt. Printing Office, 1942. Colour poster (28 x 40 in). Professionally mounted, glazed, and framed using archival materials. Original creases from folding, bright and fresh. Excellent condition. An important Second World War poster promoting women in the wartime workforce, produced in 1942 by the War Manpower Commission. At the time, "Women in the War" was one of the most widely distributed images of a woman laboring in war production, unlike the "We Can Do It" poster, which was produced only for Westinghouse plants during a few weeks in 1943 and did not become iconic until the 1980s. "Among the many agencies President Roosevelt had created during the war was the War Manpower Commission, formed in April 1942 to oversee war labor issues in the military, industrial, and civilian sectors. And in June 1942, the Office of War Information was formed to manage the flows of news and propaganda about the war to the public. By 1943, when the labor shortage was most acute, the two… Read More

Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1957. Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine gilt, facsimile signature to upper board gilt, top edge dyed yellow. With the original glassine jacket. Portrait frontispiece, five plates and an illustration within the text. Ownership ink stamp of Rudolph W. Preisendorfer with manuscript phone number on the front free endpaper. Minor bumps to corners, free endpapers partially toned. An excellent, fresh copy in the jacket that is a little rubbed and yellowed with a white spot on the lower panel. First edition, first printing. A very attractive copy in the uncommon glassine jacket. Hendrik Lorentz (1853-1928) was a theoretical physicist at the University of Leiden who made important contributions to our understanding electromagnetism and relativity, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1902 for his explanation of the Zeeman effect. Lorentz laid much of the groundwork for Einstein's theory of special relativity, and he was supportive of the younger… Read More

Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office for the United States Department of Agriculture, 1915. Octavo. Original cream wrappers printed in black. 38 plates from photographs. Wrappers faintly toned, mild dampstain affecting the lower corner of the wrappers and text, with some abraded areas where the corners of the leaves have stuck together, not generally affecting text. Very good condition. First edition of this well-illustrated guide to mushroom identification for the amateur collector. The first female mycologist to work at the United States Department of Agriculture, Flora Patterson (1847-1928) exhibited "the tenacity, audacity, and perspicacity of a true scientific visionary" (Reynolds, "Flora Patterson", Women in Microbiology, p. 219). She initially studied fungi as a childhood hobby, then attended several universities as a non-traditional student, taking a plant pathology course at Iowa State and completing her education at Radcliffe College, from where she was able to work in the Harvard… Read More

New Haven, CT: Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, 1966. 38-page pamphlet, wire-stitched. Original green wrappers printed in black. Folding plate depicting the mural and "Earth Clock". Pencilled number to the edge of the upper wrapper. A fine copy. Reissue of this illustrated visitor's guide to the magisterial Age of Reptiles mural in the Great Hall of Yale's Peabody Museum, written by John Ostrom, one of the most important palaeontologists of the 20th century. Originally published in 1966 in the same pamphlet form. A beautiful copy in unusually nice condition. "The Age of Reptiles mural is an artistic masterpiece and was, for its time, perhaps the most scientifically accurate representation of the Mesozoic world ever created" (Black, "Creating the Age of Reptiles", Smithsonian Magazine, January 3, 2012). The 110-foot-long, 16-foot-high mural was completed between 1943 and 1947 by art student Rudolph Zallinger (1919-1995), who had previously been employed at the museum painting… Read More