Le Hay and Ferriol, 1714 and 1715

LE HAY, Jacques (c.1645-c.1713) and FERRIOL, Charles de (1637-1722). Receuil de cent estampes representant differentes Nations du Levant. Paris: Le Hay and Duchange, 1714. [With:] Explication des cent estampes qui representant differentes nations du Levant. Paris: Jacques Collombat, 1715.

First edition of both plates and text of an important Ottoman costume book. “This splendid production ... contains what may be the only wholly original representations of Turkish costumes since Nicolay” (Koç). The hand-colored plates include the iconic double-page illustration of the dervishes dancing at Pera. Charles de Ferriol, the French ambassador to Constantinople brought the painter Jean-Baptiste de van Mour with him to the city—the 102 engravings here are after his work, which records a wide swath of social classes, nationalities, and religions, and was enormously influential to European understandings of the Ottoman world. In the present copy, the plates are bound intermingled with the text; often, they are found in separate volumes. Blackmer 591; Colas 1819-20.

Folio (503 x 324mm). Letterpress title to explanation and engraved title to plates, 102 engraved plates with later hand-coloring, 3 of which double-page (a little toning, occasional spots and stains). Contemporary calf (abraded, rebacked). Provenance: old erased ownership inscription on letterpress title page – "Thomas Duresme" (inscription dated 1733) – gift inscription from R. Fitzgerald to Mrs Wright dated May 1751 – Shute Barrington, Lord Bishop of Durham (armorial bookplate).