Primer in prints. Bellavoine & Lecerf, Booksellers... Lot 13

Primer in prints. Bellavoine & Lecerf, Booksellers Rue des Noyers, N° 8. Blanchard, Galerie Montesquieu N° 1 to the first. Paris. [About 1815]. In-16 oblong (11,7 x 18,1 cm). Frontispiece, (74) pp. and (25) plates engraved and colored with stencil and brush: blond calf, triple gilt fillet on the boards, gilt inner border framing the first cover preserved with pink paper on the reverse side of the first board, five-ribbed spine, red morocco title-piece (later binding). Precious and rare alphabet entirely decorated with engraved and finely hand-colored plates depicting, for the most part, small street trades. No initial on the plate, simply captioned with a name, also engraved. Most often, two characters per plate (one in the background). The text written by Pierre Blanchard (1772-1856) details the man and his work and always ends with a wise advice to the child. The author, director of an institution for children, became, in the early years of the nineteenth century, a bookseller-publisher to better distribute his works. Amazing testimony of these street scenes: boiled egg merchant and tooth puller, stripper and stevedore, merchant of ink, strawberries and bundles, dog shearer... Elegant unsigned binding (hinge of the first plate cracked).