Buy this book on-line

VAN LENNEP, Henry J : ORIENTAL ALBUM: TWENTY ILLUSTRATIONS, IN OIL AND COLORS OF THE PEOPLE

VAN LENNEP, Henry J. THE ORIENTAL ALBUM: TWENTY ILLUSTRATIONS, IN OIL AND COLORS OF THE PEOPLE AND SCENERY OF TURKEY, with an explanatory and descriptive text. New York: Anson D.F. Randolph, 1862. A tinted lithographic title-page by Charles Parsons, printed by Endicott & Co, and 20 chromolithograph plates by Parsons after Van Lennep, also printed by Endicott. 48 pp. text, including a letterpress title-page. Folio. 17 7/8 x 13 1/2 in. Original pebbled cloth boards, with title and a pictorial vignette gilt-stamped to upper board, handsomely rebacked in brown morocco with gilt lettering on spine, and with marbled endpapers renewed. The boards show light soiling and wear at fore corners, and the lower board is damp spotted. Text leaves are uniformly toned. There is a faint tide- line that begins just at the top edge of the bookblock that incrementally increases throughout the volume. It isn't really noticeable on the text leaves and only just enters the very top of edge of the last two plates. Some minor marginal foxing to some pates, otherwise they are bright and clean. It is a very good copy overall. THE ORIENTAL ALBUM is a collection of near eastern types and costumes found in mid-nineteenth century Ottoman Turkey that were "drawn directly from nature." The twenty plates that comprise the album give examples of "the various and distinct nations which compose the population living side by side, and yet unmixed." There are Turkish ladies at home and abroad, both veiled and unveiled, and their Armenian counterparts, a Turkish effendi, an Armenian peasant woman, and a Druse girl, along with a Turkish scribe, a Jewish merchant, a travelling merchant from Baghdad, a Circassian warrior, an Albanian guard, a Turkish policeman, an Armenian piper, a gypsy fortune-teller, and a bandit chief, as well as scenes showing a Jewish marriage, an Armenian wedding procession, and an Armenian bride. The figures have a monumental quality while the plates, which are printed in luminous warm tones, project a limpid serenity. The book is a landmark in American chromolithographic printing; McGrath identifies it as "the one really big chromolithographic book" of the 1860s. Henry Van Lennep (1815-1889) was born in Smyrna, the son of European parents whose families had been longtime residents of the Levant. He was educated in the United States, on the advice of American missionaries, Very Good

Bibliophile Bookbase for antiquarian books, maps and prints.