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- Sixty Five Plates of Shipping and Craft.
Sixty Five Plates of Shipping and Craft.
Cooke, Edward William.
( 1829), London
30.5 cm. unpaginated. b/w engraved plates.
Price: $300
Cookes reliable and accurate draftsmanship has made this work desirable as a record of contemporary merchant and naval craft. The book shows up fairly often in various states of disrepair, but this copy is a true relic. According to a note on the recto of the frontispiece, it was rescued from Herreshoff Castle in Marblehead, MA in 1978, and lovingly reassembled by book dealer and collector (as well as marine architect and boat builder) Cliff Niederer. Plates have been guarded where necessary, rebound with tabs, and interleaved with protective sheets. This process is spelled out in detail in a page-long “Binder’s Note” written and signed by Thomas Eliot Conroy, book binder and restorer in Berkeley, CA. Five small snapshots of paintings by Cooke have been mounted on a page toward the end of the book, with pencil captions. Whether or not these were written by L. Francis Herrshoff himself, I cannot say. See Scott 824 (citing only the smaller 50 plate edition). As is often the case, frontispiece and title page engravings are quite foxed. The rest of the images are clean or only lightly spotted. Bound in half tan morocco over marbled boards with gold spine lettering.
