pictures
Arizona
This handsome large-format book from 1971, “Arizona,” contains many page-filling photographs of stunning Arizona scenery taken by influential American landscape and nature photographer David Muench. No doubt that some of the scenes in these photographs (many featured in “Arizona Highways” magazine) have changed or even disappeared in the decades since the book’s publication. Muench specializes in portraying Western landscapes and is still active today.
Les Pigeons
Pauline de Courcelles Knip (1781-1851) was a bird artist in Paris who had studied under the famed French artist Jacques Barraband. She appropriated ornithologist Coenraad Temminck’s work on the pigeon family as text for her remarkable illustrations of pigeons. These 147 folio plates are the richest and most delicate illustrations of this group of birds ever produced. Printed in colors and finished by hand, the 87 engraved plates in volume 1 were first published in parts in 1809-1811 and then, reissued in 1838 (as in this copy) when the second volume began appearing.
Histoire de la Table
This beautifully illustrated volume gives an historical overview of European dining customs from the Middle Ages through present day. Many pages feature artworks depicting dining scenes paired with photographs of food and drink related objects from the time period to provide a sumptuous picture of “la table” through the ages. The French text gives detailed information on eating habits as well as tablewares including porcelain, glassware, silverware, textiles, and even furniture.
Aquatilium Animalium Historiae
Ippolito Salviani's book on aquatic animals is renowned as one of the three 16th century works that established ichthyology as a modern science; SIL holds the other two and this completes the trio. A professor of medicine at the University of Rome and physician to several Popes, Salviani collected fishes in the markets of Rome for anatomical examination to support his systematic studies, correcting and expanding the works of ancient authors (Aristotle, Pliny, et al.).
Die Spinnen Amerikas
The Russian Count Eugene von Keyserling (1833-1889) spent his career in the natural sciences specializing in spiders. His publications focus primarily on the spiders of North and South America, and Die Spinnen Amerikas constitutes his magnum opus, describing hundreds of species new to science. It also contains 58 lithographed plates (43 colored) and is considered one of the finest iconographies of arachnids ever published.
