A Set of Six Chinese Watercolours of Chinese Junks and Sampans, Circa 1850 The Chinese watercolours depict various Chinese watercraft known as sampans and Junks. ;The  More »

A Set of Six Chinese Watercolours of Chinese Junks and Sampans, Circa 1850 The Chinese watercolours depict various Chinese watercraft known as sampans and Junks. ;The material they are painted on is pith paper. ;The frames are eglomise and decoupage. Frame: 13 3/4 inches x 18 inches; Image size: 6 inches x 10 1/2 inches   « Less

A Fine French ;Early 19th Century Botanical Engraving of Nymphaea Nelumbo, from ;''Description de l''Egypte'', Image by Mr. Delile, 1809-1813 The engraving depicts a  More »

A Fine French ;Early 19th Century Botanical Engraving of Nymphaea Nelumbo, from ;''Description de l''Egypte'', Image by Mr. Delile, 1809-1813 The engraving depicts a Nymphaea Nelumbo. ;To the top left is the following NH botanique par Mr. Delile and named on bottom 1.2.5 Nymphaea Nelumbo. ;To the top right Plate 61. Dimensions: 27 1/2 inches high x 35 inches wide. Nelumbo nucifera, known by a number of names including Indian Lotus, Sacred Lotus, Bean of India, or simply Lotus, is a plant in the Nelumbonaceae family. Botanically, Nelumbo nucifera (Gaertn.) may also be referred to by its former names, Nelumbium speciosum (Willd.) or Nymphaea nelumbo. This plant is an aquatic perennial. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelumbo_nucifera) ;''Description de l''Egypte'', the seminal publication by the French government detailing the results of the Napoleon''s pioneering military and scientific expedition to Egypt (1798-1801) and the first comprehensive illustrated description of ancient and modern Egypt. Reference: From: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Description_de_l''%C3%89gypte) The Description de l''Égypte (English: Description of Egypt) was a series of publications, appearing first in 1809 and continuing until the final volume appeared in 1829, which offered a comprehensive scientific description of ancient and modern Egypt as well as its natural history. It is the collaborative work of about 160 civilian scholars and scientists, known popularly as the savants, who accompanied Napoleon''s expedition to Egypt in 1798 to 1801 as part of the French Revolutionary Wars, as well as about 2000 artists and technicians, including 400 engravers, who would later compile it into a full work. The full title of the work is Description de l''Égypte, ou Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Égypte pendant l''expédition de l''armée française (English: Description of Egypt, or the collection of observations and research which was made in Egypt during the expedition of the French Army). Summary Approximately 160 civilian scholars and scientists, many drawn from the Institut de France, collaborated on the Description. Collectively they comprised the Commission des Sciences et Arts d''Égypte. About a third of them would later also become members of the Institute of Egypt. In late August 1798, on the order of Napoleon, the Institute of Egypt (l''Institut d''Égypte) was founded in the palace of Hassan-Kashif on the outskirts of Cairo, with Gaspard Monge as president.[1] The structure of the institute was based on the Institut de France. The institute housed a library, laboratories, workshops, and the savants'' various Egyptian collections. The workshop was particularly important, supplying both the army as well as the servants with necessary equipment. Many new instruments were constructed as well, to replace those lost during the sinking of the French fleet in August 1798 at Aboukir Bay (Battle of the Nile) and the Cairo riot of October 1798. One of the goals of the Institute was to propagate knowledge. To this end, the savants published a journal, La Decade Egyptienne, as well as a newspaper, the Courier de L''Egypte, which disseminated information about the French occupation and the activities of the French army, the Commission des Sciences et Arts d''Égypte, and the Institute itself. The vision of a single comprehensive publication amalgamating all that the French discovered in Egypt was conceived already in November 1798, when Joseph Fourier was entrusted with the task of uniting the reports from the various disciplines for later publication. When the French army left Egypt in 1801, the savants took with them a large quantities of unpublished notes, drawings, and various collections of smaller artifacts that they could smuggle unnoticed past the British. In February 1802, at the instigation of Jean Antoine Chaptal, the French Minister of the Interior, and by decree of Napoleon, a commission was established to manage the preparation of the large amount of data for a single publication. The final work would draw data from the already-published journal La Decade, the newspaper Courier de L''Égypte, the four-volume Mémoires sur l''Égypte (an expansion of the La Decade journal, published by the French government during and after the Egyptian campaign) and an abundance of notes and illustrations from the various scholars and scientists. The huge volume of information to be published meant adopting an apparently haphazard modus operandi: when sufficiently many plates or text on a particular subject were ready, the information was published. Despite this, publication of the first edition took over 20 years. The first test volumes of engravings were presented to Napoleon in January 1808. Initially published by order of the emperor (Napoleon Le Grand), successive volumes would be published by order of the king, and the last simply by order of the government. A second edition (known as the Panckoucke edition) was published by Charles Louis Fleury Panckoucke. The text was expanded in more volumes and printed in a smaller formats, new pulls were taken from the plates, and these were bound with many of the large format plates folded in the smaller format volumes. The typographical quality of the texts, the beauty of engravings, and the unusual formats (the Mammutfolio is 1m x .81m) makes Description de l''Égypte an exceptional work. The first edition usually consists of nine volumes of text, one volume with description of the plates and ten volumes of plates. Two additional volumes in Mammut size (also called Elephant plates) contain plates from Antiquites and Etat Moderne and finally one volume of map plates (Atlas), making for twenty-three volumes in all. Variants in the number of volumes does exist. The second edition usually consists of thirty-seven volumes, with twenty-four volumes bound in twenty-six books (volume eighteen is a volume split in three books) of text, volume number ten being the description of the plates and ten volumes of plates, plus one volume of maps. The second edition was made at less cost, and is in black and white; the frontispiece, however, is rendered in full color (the exact reverse of the first edition, in which the frontispiece is black and white while the rest is color). The ten volumes of plates consists of 894 plates, made from over 3000 drawings, most of them located in Histoire Naturelle volume I and II. Some of these plates contain over 100 individual engravings of flora or fauna on a single plate. 38 of the plates are hand coloured. Some variants of the work may contain a few more plates; example Bernard J. Shapero Rare Books list a 38 volume second edition with 909 plates. The plates have been republished partly or in full if different works, most notable by Taschen GmbH since 1995, which is a complete reproduction of the 10 volumes of plates, though not the 52 plates of the atlas volume. Influence The influence of this work on the nascent field of Egyptology, in every country to which it was sent, is difficult to gauge. At the same time, country-specific studies of the work''s reception have been written [2]. While a colossal achievement and one frequently referenced in major publications concerning Egypt and its history, the work''s limitations quickly became apparent. The general conception and often-repeated idea that this is a unique and unprecedented work is inaccurate. ;There are several works from the 18th century and even 17th century that do much the same as Description de l''Égypte, on a smaller scale. Works such as John Greaves, Pyramidographia (1646), Bernard de Montfaucon''s, 10 volume L''Antiquite expliquee et representee en figures (1719-1724), which reproduces, methodically grouped, all the ancient monuments and devoted a notable amount to Egyptian objects, Benoît de Maillet, Description de l''Égypte (1735), Richard Pococke, A Description of the East and Some Other Countries (1743), Frederic Louis Norden, Voyage d''Egypte et de Nubie (1755) and Carsten Niebuhr''s highly influential two volume Reisebeschreibung von Arabien und anderen umliegenden Ländern (1774 & 1778), can be seen as mini Description de l''Egypte in their own right, and their literate and pictorial influence might actually be greater than Description de l''Egypte, as they stood uncontested and often uncorrected for many more years. The very long time it took to publish this work meant that a large part of it, at least the text, though near encyclopaediac in nature, was quickly out of date once it arrived in the hands of people interested in these matters. This was not notable for the description of modern Egypt in the work; however, for the description of ancient Egypt it was. The text is written without the knowledge of how to read hieroglyphics, and the work represents the last major work to be written before the decipherment of the hieroglyphic script, which would slowly become available, just as the first volumes of the large expanded text of the second edition, were printed. The root for the text is found 20 years earlier, and not only did a lot happen in those 20 years, but soon, Jean-François Champollion found the way to read hieroglyphs (greatly helped by Thomas Young''s initial work). Though Champollion’s Grammaire egyptienne, published posthumously in 1836, was not widely accepted until years later, the text of Description de l''Egypte would, in a decade or two, become largely obsolete. Another aspect is its accessibility. The low number of copies made ( 1000), its high price, and its very large physical size made the work accessible practically only to the very elite of society at that time. Even today, finding a complete copy (text and drawings) is not easy. Only major libraries or state libraries are in the possession of such and a complete reproduction or translation into other languages has, to the best of knowledge, never been done. All this should be seen in stark contrast to Karl Richard Lepsius''s 12 volume masterpiece Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien (1849-1859), which to this day is quoted repeatedly as both source and authority on various ancient Egyptian matters and is considered the earliest reliable publications on a large selection of monuments. Notes 1. ; ; ;Louis de Laus de Boisy, “The Institute of Egypt,” Napoleon: Symbol for an Age, A Brief History with Documents, ed. Rafe Blaufarb (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008), 45-48. 2. ; ; ;Bednarski, A. (2005) Holding Egypt: tracing the reception of the Description de l''Egypte in nineteenth-century Great Britain. Goldenhouse Publications. ISBN 0-9550256-0-5 3. ; ; ;On page four the title page year is given as 1821. 4. ; ; ;On page four the titlepage is given as "Explication Des Planches" dated 1821. On ; ; ; ; ; ;page six the title page is given as "Tome Dixieme Explication Des Planches" dated ; ; ; ; ;1826.   « Less

A Botanical Still Life Painting, The painting on thin clear paper depicts a still life of a basket of flowers overflowing with floers on a slate table top. ;A bee alights  More »

A Botanical Still Life Painting, The painting on thin clear paper depicts a still life of a basket of flowers overflowing with floers on a slate table top. ;A bee alights on one of the flowers while a snail moves along the table top. Frame: 28 1/4 wide x ;19 inches high; Sight: 18 inches x 12 1/2 inches An old label on the reverse from John Mathieson & Co, 20 Frederick Street, Edinburgh EH2 2JS and hand written on label the number 1089. ( John Mathieson & Co., Edinburgh does not still exist. This company was in operation in the early 1930s, continuing at least into the 1940s.)   « Less

A Fine Large Irish Portrait Miniature of a British Officer, Signed & Dated by Horace Hone 1789. The large oval miniature depicts a British officer dressed in a red  More »

A Fine Large Irish Portrait Miniature of a British Officer, Signed & Dated by Horace Hone 1789. The large oval miniature depicts a British officer dressed in a red jacket with gold buttons, gilt epaulets with gold fringe, a white lace cravat and a black high collar with a white or silver button showing below the ear. ;Above the cravat is a black neck band. The officer is facing right and his head is turned towards the viewer with an alert expression, his eyebrows slight raised. ;He wears long sideburns extending slightly onto his face and his hair is worn closely cropped. The miniature is mounted in a brass case with a blue glass back with a central oval filled with woven hair and large gilt letters "JR". Dimensions: Height: 3 7/16 inches x 2 1/8 inches wide. ;Loop on top addition 1/2 inch in height. Signature: To the lower right.are the initials: HH for Horace Hone and below 1789. Reference: The Miniature in Europe, Vol I, Leo R. Schidlof, ;page 371, writes," Horace Hone painted on ivory and enamel and also worked as an engraver. ;He usually signed: H.H, followed by the date." "Horace Hone is one of the best English miniaturists of the 18th century and some of his works equal or surpass those of Plimer and Engleheart. ;His miniatures are excellently drawn and very expressive. ;He paints partly in very distinct parallel brush strokes, using the scrapper for the wexecution of the hair. ;The light in the eyes is always placed very high and often touches the upper eyelid." Examples of his work can be found in the V & A, The National Gallery, Dublin and The David-Weill Collection, Louvres, Paris amongst others. From http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/biographies-of-irish-artists/horace-hone.htm Horace Hone (1756-1825) A member of the famous Dublin Hone family of artists, originally from Holland, Horace Hone was born in London and there received his early training in fine art from his father Nathaniel Hone the Elder (1718-84). This instruction encompassed miniature painting in watercolour on various media including enamel and even ivory. At the age of 14, he studied drawing and painting at the Royal Academy Schools, and began exhibiting his works at the Academy in 1772: a practice he continued for the next 50 years. In 1779, he was elected an Associate Member of the Academy, and three years later - at the invitation of Lady Temple, one of Hone''s patrons whose husband was the colonial ruler of Ireland - settled in Dublin. Lady Temple was herself an important member of the Anglo Irish aristocracy with widespread social connections among the ruling classes, and was instrumental in ensuring that Hone received a constant stream of portrait commissions, for which he was eminently equipped. Indeed, his portrait painting became so popular that in 1795 he was appointed to the post of Miniature Painter to the Prince of Wales. Unfortunately, the Act of Union caused many of Hone''s customers to quit Ireland and move to London in the early 1800s. Hone himself followed in 1803, and managed to re-establish himself as a miniaturist. Sadly, he had suffered for many years from mental illness, and declined rapidly in his later years. He died in London at the age of 69.   « Less

A French Portrait Miniature Mounted in a Horn Box. Circa 1790-1800 The circular box is mounted with a large miniature mounted in the top with a pressed brass surround.  More »

A French Portrait Miniature Mounted in a Horn Box. Circa 1790-1800 The circular box is mounted with a large miniature mounted in the top with a pressed brass surround. ;A brass bezel surrounds the lower section of the lower portion of the box to receive the cover. The miniature depicts an attractive young woman sitting before a landscape background. ;The woman, ;a "Merveilleuses" sits facing left, her head turned slightly. ;She wears a white muslin dress à la Grecque with a coral coloured wide belt around her waist with a white clasp. ;Her full curly hair is loosly pulled together with a coral coloured ribbon. Diameter: 3 1/8 inch; Height: 1 inch. Reference: Quicherat, Jules. Histoire du costume en France, ;Paris, 1875. Scans by C. Leo Maginnis 1794-95 (possibly) Madame Theresa Tallien by David From the article: LES INCROYABLES ET MERVEILLEUSES: FASHION AS ANTI-REBELLION ;(http://www.blastmilk.com/decollete/guillotine/fashion/incroyables-et-merveilleus.php) Les Merveilleuses, or Marvelous Women, ruled the live fast, die young social whirlwind that took over the salons of Paris after the Terror. At their front Thérésa Cabarrus Fontenay Tallien and Joséphine de Beauharnais (later Empress) both of whom just barely survived the Jacobin regime. It was partly on Thérésa''s behalf, with whom Tallien had been conducting a torrid affair, that he spearheaded the Thermadorian take down of Robespierre and the Montagnards. The à la Grecque style typified by Thérésa, Joséphine, and Madame Récamier consisted of clinging, flowing classical Greek and Roman styles in white silks and muslins, draped with brightly colored shawls and ribbons edged with classical motifs. The once allegorical fashion left the painters studio and took to the streets and ballrooms, their dainty feet shod in golden sandals, and dresses dampened to enhance their cling (though wearing knitted flesh colored stays and stockings to preserve a vestige of modesty). Madame Tallien though was the real deal, and famously appeared at the Paris Opera wearing a white silk dress without sleeves and sans petticoats (gasp!). Charles Maurice de Talleyrand commented: "Il n''est pas possible de s''exposer plus somptueusement!" ("It is not possible to exhibit oneself more sumptuously!") [source: wikipedia]. Hair was worn curled and dressed with ribbons à la grecque or clipped short à la victime or à la titus, in emulation of the last haircut the condemned received before being sent to the guillotine so as not to impede the blade. This short and sassy style lasted amazingly till the early 1800s, but never caught on in England or other countries, unlike the empire waisted dress, which proved the silhouette du jour for nearly thirty years.   « Less

An Oil Painting of a Young Child, 18th Century. The naive painting depicts a young child eating cherries. Cherries symbolize something new, pure and pristine.  More »

An Oil Painting of a Young Child, 18th Century. The naive painting depicts a young child eating cherries. Cherries symbolize something new, pure and pristine. Dimensions: 15 inches x 12 inches Marks: ;On the Backboard in green paint "A. FERDINAND".   « Less

A Set of Eight Chinese Watercolours of Birds on Paper, Circa 1850 The exotic birds are each painted amongst vegetation within ;later black and gilt japanned frames.  More »

A Set of Eight Chinese Watercolours of Birds on Paper, Circa 1850 The exotic birds are each painted amongst vegetation within ;later black and gilt japanned frames. Dimensions: 9 3/4 inches x 10 3/4 inches (25cm x 27.5cm)   « Less

A Set of Eight Chinese Watercolours of Birds on Pith Paper, Circa 1850 The watercolours of different birds are painted on pith paper (sometimes erroneously called rice  More »

A Set of Eight Chinese Watercolours of Birds on Pith Paper, Circa 1850 The watercolours of different birds are painted on pith paper (sometimes erroneously called rice paper). ;Each with a eglomise and decoupage frame. Dimensions: Frame: 13 3/4 inches high x 18 inches wide Sight: 5 3/4 inches x 9 inches.   « Less

A Pair of Chinese Watercolours of Birds on Pith Paper, Circa 1850 The pictures of birds are within a Chinese style frame in black, red and gold. Dimensions: 12 3/4  More »

A Pair of Chinese Watercolours of Birds on Pith Paper, Circa 1850 The pictures of birds are within a Chinese style frame in black, red and gold. Dimensions: 12 3/4 inches x 17 1/4 inches China Trade watercolours, although produced as early as the late 18th century, enjoyed the height of their popularity in the 1840’s and ‘50’s. ;Travels to China were difficult and expensive, and those from the West that could afford to make the journey did not wish to return empty-handed. Similar to the Grand Tour of the Continent, China was one of the ultimate elite destinations and anything of quality that was brought back immediately became status symbols. Watercolours, available in a variety of subjects and quite handsomely bound, were a popular choice not only due to their aesthetics, but also because of the ease of which they could be carried; large oil paintings and bulky ceramic objects did not lend themselves well to transport. Although a commodity produced for business, the watercolours were very well done, often by well-respected artists. Many of the artists did not work in watercolours often; one of the most respected artists at the time, Sunqua, painted primarily in oils. He worked in watercolor and gouache in the 1830’s- late 1840’s, producing albums and single paintings for export and trade during this time. He was an accomplished artist, whom Crossman says: “...would seem to belong to an Italian or European tradition of ship and port painting”, so good were his compositions and palettes. The first cultural exchanges appeared in the 16th century, when Italian Jesuit missionaries began filtering into China; as the literati widely rejected their Christian teachings, the Italians hurried to find another channel though which to forge bonds in the East. They began sending accomplished artists and teaching European painting techniques instead, forming a particular aesthetic that remained popular for centuries. The earliest China Trade pictures were produced on both Chinese and European paper; “Beginning in the 1780’s, the Chinese artists used western paper for most of their watercolours for the export trade… Supplying the Chinese with the raw materials for a product which was to be sold in the West was not unusual, since it occurred in many fields of manufacture. The other paper commonly used for watercolours and gouaches after 1800 or 1810, was pith, which has been mistakenly called ‘rice’ paper, both at that time and today…’ The so-called rice paper is made of the pith of the Aralia papyrifera. The pith is soaked before cutting; the workman then applies the blade to the cylinders of pith, and, turning them round dexterously, pares them from the circumference to the centre, making a rolled layer of equal thickness throughout’. The pith paper was a very fragile medium on which to work, and many of the watercolours on pith which have survived are cracked and broken.” The pictures were then mounted into albums with a silk ribbon, often blue but not always, and bound between boards covered with brightly coloured and patterned silk. Although it was extremely fragile, pith paper was widely favored due to its nature; the gouache used by the Chinese sat on the surface of the paper and produced a bright and sparkling effect. Very fine detail could be achieved whilst maintaining clean, vibrant colours. The material did not lend itself to the flat wash of colour favoured for European watercolours. Gouache, from the Italian guazzo, "water paint, splash") is a type of paint consisting of pigment suspended in water. Gouache differs from watercolour in that the particles are larger, the ratio of pigment to water is much higher and there is the presence of an inert white pigment, such as chalk. This makes gouache heavier and more opaque, with greater reflective qualities. Popular subjects included Chinese costumes, birds- often with richly painted backgrounds, fish, insects and junks and sampans. The shimmering paint served to heighten the exotic nature of the works, and the charming naiveté added to the perceived indigenous nature of the paintings. The art was made “…for strangers, strangers with an entirely different set of aesthetic presumptions and expectations, stands outside the major currents of art produced for a Chinese audience. It occupies a space which is neither wholly Chinese nor wholly European, but which can, by the nature of the compromises it makes, tell us a lot about how one culture saw the other in the age before photography. It did not exist separately from, but rather as an integral part of, the relationship between China and the West…” Although produced in the mid-19th century, the works remain as naïve, exotic and desirable now as they did when seen for the first time.   « Less

A Pair of Fine French ;Botanical Stipple Engravings of the Blue Egyptian Waterlilly from ;''Description de l''Egypte'', 1809-1813 The stipple engraving depicts various  More »

A Pair of Fine French ;Botanical Stipple Engravings of the Blue Egyptian Waterlilly from ;''Description de l''Egypte'', 1809-1813 The stipple engraving depicts various images of parts of thr Nymphaea Caerulea lotus plant from the Nile. ;To the top left a printed inscription reads NH Botanique par Mr. Delile. ;To the centre bottom 2. Nymphaea Caerulea. ;To the top right PL 60. To bottom right Plee Sc t. Dimensions: 27 1/2 inches high x 35 inches wide. Nymphaea caerulea, also known as the Blue Egyptian water lily or sacred blue lily, is a water-lily in the genus Nymphaea. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymphaea_caerulea) ;''Description de l''Egypte'', the seminal publication by the French government detailing the results of the Napoleon''s pioneering military and scientific expedition to Egypt (1798-1801) and the first comprehensive illustrated description of ancient and modern Egypt. Reference: From: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Description_de_l''%C3%89gypte) The Description de l''Égypte (English: Description of Egypt) was a series of publications, appearing first in 1809 and continuing until the final volume appeared in 1829, which offered a comprehensive scientific description of ancient and modern Egypt as well as its natural history. It is the collaborative work of about 160 civilian scholars and scientists, known popularly as the savants, who accompanied Napoleon''s expedition to Egypt in 1798 to 1801 as part of the French Revolutionary Wars, as well as about 2000 artists and technicians, including 400 engravers, who would later compile it into a full work. The full title of the work is Description de l''Égypte, ou Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Égypte pendant l''expédition de l''armée française (English: Description of Egypt, or the collection of observations and research which was made in Egypt during the expedition of the French Army). Summary Approximately 160 civilian scholars and scientists, many drawn from the Institut de France, collaborated on the Description. Collectively they comprised the Commission des Sciences et Arts d''Égypte. About a third of them would later also become members of the Institute of Egypt. In late August 1798, on the order of Napoleon, the Institute of Egypt (l''Institut d''Égypte) was founded in the palace of Hassan-Kashif on the outskirts of Cairo, with Gaspard Monge as president.[1] The structure of the institute was based on the Institut de France. The institute housed a library, laboratories, workshops, and the savants'' various Egyptian collections. The workshop was particularly important, supplying both the army as well as the servants with necessary equipment. Many new instruments were constructed as well, to replace those lost during the sinking of the French fleet in August 1798 at Aboukir Bay (Battle of the Nile) and the Cairo riot of October 1798. One of the goals of the Institute was to propagate knowledge. To this end, the savants published a journal, La Decade Egyptienne, as well as a newspaper, the Courier de L''Egypte, which disseminated information about the French occupation and the activities of the French army, the Commission des Sciences et Arts d''Égypte, and the Institute itself. The vision of a single comprehensive publication amalgamating all that the French discovered in Egypt was conceived already in November 1798, when Joseph Fourier was entrusted with the task of uniting the reports from the various disciplines for later publication. When the French army left Egypt in 1801, the savants took with them a large quantities of unpublished notes, drawings, and various collections of smaller artifacts that they could smuggle unnoticed past the British. In February 1802, at the instigation of Jean Antoine Chaptal, the French Minister of the Interior, and by decree of Napoleon, a commission was established to manage the preparation of the large amount of data for a single publication. The final work would draw data from the already-published journal La Decade, the newspaper Courier de L''Égypte, the four-volume Mémoires sur l''Égypte (an expansion of the La Decade journal, published by the French government during and after the Egyptian campaign) and an abundance of notes and illustrations from the various scholars and scientists. The huge volume of information to be published meant adopting an apparently haphazard modus operandi: when sufficiently many plates or text on a particular subject were ready, the information was published. Despite this, publication of the first edition took over 20 years. The first test volumes of engravings were presented to Napoleon in January 1808. Initially published by order of the emperor (Napoleon Le Grand), successive volumes would be published by order of the king, and the last simply by order of the government. A second edition (known as the Panckoucke edition) was published by Charles Louis Fleury Panckoucke. The text was expanded in more volumes and printed in a smaller formats, new pulls were taken from the plates, and these were bound with many of the large format plates folded in the smaller format volumes. The typographical quality of the texts, the beauty of engravings, and the unusual formats (the Mammutfolio is 1m x .81m) makes Description de l''Égypte an exceptional work. The first edition usually consists of nine volumes of text, one volume with description of the plates and ten volumes of plates. Two additional volumes in Mammut size (also called Elephant plates) contain plates from Antiquites and Etat Moderne and finally one volume of map plates (Atlas), making for twenty-three volumes in all. Variants in the number of volumes does exist. The second edition usually consists of thirty-seven volumes, with twenty-four volumes bound in twenty-six books (volume eighteen is a volume split in three books) of text, volume number ten being the description of the plates and ten volumes of plates, plus one volume of maps. The second edition was made at less cost, and is in black and white; the frontispiece, however, is rendered in full color (the exact reverse of the first edition, in which the frontispiece is black and white while the rest is color). The ten volumes of plates consists of 894 plates, made from over 3000 drawings, most of them located in Histoire Naturelle volume I and II. Some of these plates contain over 100 individual engravings of flora or fauna on a single plate. 38 of the plates are hand coloured. Some variants of the work may contain a few more plates; example Bernard J. Shapero Rare Books list a 38 volume second edition with 909 plates. The plates have been republished partly or in full if different works, most notable by Taschen GmbH since 1995, which is a complete reproduction of the 10 volumes of plates, though not the 52 plates of the atlas volume. Influence The influence of this work on the nascent field of Egyptology, in every country to which it was sent, is difficult to gauge. At the same time, country-specific studies of the work''s reception have been written [2]. While a colossal achievement and one frequently referenced in major publications concerning Egypt and its history, the work''s limitations quickly became apparent. The general conception and often-repeated idea that this is a unique and unprecedented work is inaccurate. ;There are several works from the 18th century and even 17th century that do much the same as Description de l''Égypte, on a smaller scale. Works such as John Greaves, Pyramidographia (1646), Bernard de Montfaucon''s, 10 volume L''Antiquite expliquee et representee en figures (1719-1724), which reproduces, methodically grouped, all the ancient monuments and devoted a notable amount to Egyptian objects, Benoît de Maillet, Description de l''Égypte (1735), Richard Pococke, A Description of the East and Some Other Countries (1743), Frederic Louis Norden, Voyage d''Egypte et de Nubie (1755) and Carsten Niebuhr''s highly influential two volume Reisebeschreibung von Arabien und anderen umliegenden Ländern (1774 & 1778), can be seen as mini Description de l''Egypte in their own right, and their literate and pictorial influence might actually be greater than Description de l''Egypte, as they stood uncontested and often uncorrected for many more years. The very long time it took to publish this work meant that a large part of it, at least the text, though near encyclopaediac in nature, was quickly out of date once it arrived in the hands of people interested in these matters. This was not notable for the description of modern Egypt in the work; however, for the description of ancient Egypt it was. The text is written without the knowledge of how to read hieroglyphics, and the work represents the last major work to be written before the decipherment of the hieroglyphic script, which would slowly become available, just as the first volumes of the large expanded text of the second edition, were printed. The root for the text is found 20 years earlier, and not only did a lot happen in those 20 years, but soon, Jean-François Champollion found the way to read hieroglyphs (greatly helped by Thomas Young''s initial work). Though Champollion’s Grammaire egyptienne, published posthumously in 1836, was not widely accepted until years later, the text of Description de l''Egypte would, in a decade or two, become largely obsolete. Another aspect is its accessibility. The low number of copies made ( 1000), its high price, and its very large physical size made the work accessible practically only to the very elite of society at that time. Even today, finding a complete copy (text and drawings) is not easy. Only major libraries or state libraries are in the possession of such and a complete reproduction or translation into other languages has, to the best of knowledge, never been done. All this should be seen in stark contrast to Karl Richard Lepsius''s 12 volume masterpiece Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien (1849-1859), which to this day is quoted repeatedly as both source and authority on various ancient Egyptian matters and is considered the earliest reliable publications on a large selection of monuments. Notes 1. ; ; ;Louis de Laus de Boisy, “The Institute of Egypt,” Napoleon: Symbol for an Age, A Brief History with Documents, ed. Rafe Blaufarb (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008), 45-48. 2. ; ; ;Bednarski, A. (2005) Holding Egypt: tracing the reception of the Description de l''Egypte in nineteenth-century Great Britain. Goldenhouse Publications. ISBN 0-9550256-0-5 3. ; ; ;On page four the title page year is given as 1821. 4. ; ; ;On page four the titlepage is given as "Explication Des Planches" dated 1821. On ; ; ; ; ; ;page six the title page is given as "Tome Dixieme Explication Des Planches" dated ; ; ; ; ;1826.   « Less