Romé de l’Isle, Jean-Baptiste Louis | Large paper copy of the first edition of Essai de Cristallographie

Romé de l’Isle, Jean-Baptiste Louis

Essai de Cristallographie, ou description des figures géométriques… Paris: Didot jeune, and Knapen & Delaguette, 1772

4to (250 x 185 mm). 10 engraved folding plates, 2 typographic folding tables, type-ornaments in text; light soiling and foxing to title, occasional pale spotting, a bright copy. Contemporary calf, gilt-ruled boards, gilt-decorated spine, red morocco spine label, all edges gilt; rubbing and superficial cracking to the boards, a few small losses and spots of wear to the boards’ edges, the spine sun-darkened, a sound binding with no signs of restoration.

First edition, large paper copy. Not only is this one of the copies printed on large paper, but the paper is also slightly heavier than that of the octavo edition. Pages xii-xxviii of this important work on modern crystallography contain an annotated bibliography of the principal works on crystals.

“Romé de l’Isle emphasized the importance of crystalline form in mineralogical description. In the Essai, Romé de l'Isle’s first treatise on crystallography, he identified 110 crystal forms (drawing upon Linnaeus, who had listed 40), gave values (although these were often imprecise) for the plane angles of these forms, and described in minute detail the minerals that exhibited them. The Essai forms the core of Romé’s four-volume Cristallographie (1783), originally conceived as the second edition of the Essai; itw as in Cristallographie that Romé formulated the fundamental law of the constancy of interfacial angles" (Norman. Library of Science and Medicine. Vol. II, p. 667).

REFERENCES

Norman, II, 1847; Wellcome 4:553

PROVENANCE

Murat (armorial bookplate, likely Louis Murat de l’Estang) — Haskell F. Norman (bookplate; purchased from Jeremy Norman & Co.; Christie’s New York, 16 June 1998, lot 757) — Joseph A. Freilich (booklabel; Sotheby’s New York, January 10, 2001, lot 460)