Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - January - 2005 Issue
Maps, Books, and Manuscripts From Asher Rare Books
A unique collection of handwritten alphabets.
For those interested in criminal justice, we recommend Practijcke ende Hantboeck in Criminele Saken...by Joos de Damhouder. This is the second Dutch edition of this popular 16th century work, published in 1561. Along with the text, Asher, from their website, notes that it contains 56 illustrations of crimes, prosecutions and punishments, including, "graphically illustrated...murder, robbery, arson, rape and other sexual crimes, various crimes against the church, suicide, bribery, stealing cattle, loading dice, forging coins, torturing people, waging war, dike breaking and almost any imaginable offence, including emptying chamber pots out the window onto unsuspecting passers-by!" All of those crimes are forgivable except the last. I do not know how people lived in cities in those days. Item 11. €9,500 (US $12,726).
Johannes Kentmann was both a physician and mineralogist, which suited him ideally to author Calculorum qui in Corpore... This is a 1565 book about stones in the human body. It includes both naturally occurring stones and swallowed foreign objects which were never meant to be eaten. Eleven woodcuts show 30 objects found within various people. Asher notes that this book provided the first detailed account of gallstones. Someone had to be first. Item 23. €4,000 (US $5,356).
Item 39 is a small pamphlet printed by Spanish printer Juan de Cabrera Seville in 1624. He was celebrating a victory in Dalmatia (now part of Croatia) in the ongoing wars against the Ottoman Empire that seemed to never end. In the pamphlet, he provides a drawing of a being meant to represent the Ottomans. It has three horns, three eyes, donkey ears and backward feet. One can assume the depiction was not meant to be complimentary. €3,850 (US $5,156).
Item 30 is a most interesting manuscript of exotic alphabets. Headed Variorum Alphabetorum, it was created in the Netherlands around 1680. It includes carefully hand-drawn characters for numerous languages, including Latin, Dutch, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Ethiopic, Armenian, Greek, Bengali, and many more. The writer has even added Utopian and another imaginary alphabet. See the image on this page. €12,500 (US $16,714).
You may find Asher Rare Books' listings on their website at www.asherbooks.com or call them at +31 (0)255 52 38 39.
