Beschreibung:

(BLOW BOOKS)Les Perroquets. [Probably French, late 18th century] 4to (254 x 191 mm). An album comprising 90 leaves in an ordered sequence of pairs of handcolored engravings repeated nine times, mostly in an up-down pattern, each sequence interrupted by pairs of black or blank paper, the pages notched to form tabs. Nineteenth-century reddish brown pebbled cloth, marbled endpapers, brown calf spine decorated and lettered gilt; spine sunned. The earliest known mention of blow books was in 1550 by mathematician Geralamo Cardano. Reginald Scot touches on their use and preparation in his 1584 treatise, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (see lot 542). Hocus Pocus Junior—the earliest known collection of magic tricks in English first published in 1634—describes the blow book as a "iugling booke" or "booke for Waggery." The earliest surviving examples are Italian versions from the sixteenth century. The present work is most likely French and from the second half of the eighteenth century. It contains a series of identical pairs of engravings of parrots, devil masks, seated monkeys picking fruit, vases of flowers, Pierrot (after Watteau's 1712–19 portrait of Gilles), jaunty vagabonds with long clay pipes, windmills, and Il Dottore—like Pierrot—from the Commedia dell'Arte. Each sequence is repeated nine times and is interrupted by black paper after the monkeys and blank white paper after the windmills. Throughout the series, the parrots appear right side up, the masks upside down, monkeys and vases right side up, Pierrot upside down, the vagabonds right side up, the windmills and Il Dottore upside down.