Beschreibung:

STUART, JAMES and NICHOLAS REVETT The Antiquities of Athens measured and delineated...Volume the First (--the Third). London 1762-1794. 3 vols. (of 4), large folio, 528 x 360 (20 13/16 x 14 3/16), contemporary diced russia gilt , A PRESENTATION BINDING, vols. 1 and 2 with the covers framed by a broad gilt-tooled palmette border enclosing a large central medallion gilt-blocked on a thin leather onlay showing Athena and her emblems, within a wreath of myrtle or laurel leaves and a circle of palmettes, vol. 3 with similar circle and wreath, the centers blank, within a broad gilt border of stylized oak leaves, board edges and turn-ins gilt, rebacked, spines gilt, morocco lettering-pieces, some minor restoration to corners, covers of vols. 1 and 2 rubbed, the medallions rubbed and scratched, that of the lower cover of vol. 1 particularly so, a few gouges or scrapes to lower covers, the upper cover of vol. 2 dampstained, vol. 1 without the subscribers' list, 10-inch repaired tear to the second folding plate in vol. 1 (Chapter V, plate 3), Chap. IV, plate 3 in vol. 2 cropped with slight loss to publishing statement, approximately 7 other plates shaved, small tear to paper surface of Chap. III, plate 2 (vol. 2), one marginal repaired tear, portrait and title of vol. 2 marginally dampstained, occasional minor mostly marginal dampstaining in vols. 1 and 2, more severe in vol. 3, some marginal foxing . FIRST EDITION, engraved portrait of Stuart, dated 1789, in vol. 2, 228 engraved views, plans, charts and diagrams, some double-page or folding (plate 29 of vol. 2 never issued), Faden's folding map of Greece, 1790, colored in outline in vol. 3, title vignettes and numerous engraved vignettes in the text; in vol. 2, 7 plates apparently from an earlier state: 4 are without the publication statement (plate no. I [view of the Acropolis], Chap. I, plate 1, Chap. II, pl. 2, and Chap. IV, plate 1), and 3 bear the publication statement but are unnumbered (Chap. II, pl. 1, Chap. III, 1, and Chap. V, 1). Fowler 340 ("This work was of great importance in spreading the knowledge of greek architecture, and was the source book for the later Greek revival in England"). The binding was designed by James Stuart in 1762 for presentation of the first two volumes. The central medallion of Athene Parthenos appears in vol. 2 in a corner of the plan of the Acropolis, where it is dated 1753. As Howard Nixon has demonstrated for matching red morocco presentation copies (cf. Five Centuries of English Bookbinding , 69, and The Book Collector , Winter 1965, p. 538), the variant tools used for the two volumes show that they were bound at different times: presumably vol. 1 was bound near the time of publication, making it the earlist known neo-classical binding, predating Adams's Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian by two years. Two copies of this presentation binding in morocco have come on the market in the past 30 years (the Fitzwilliam-Abbey copy in 1965 and the Blackmer copy in 1989), but according to ABPC, no copies bound in russia have been sold, nor did Nixon know of any. (3)