First published in Oxford in 1688 it contains a comprehensive account of lacquering techniques, “...with the best way of making all sorts of Varnish for Japan, Wood, prints and pictures. The Method of Guilding, Burnishing and Lackering with the Art of Guilding, Separating and refining Metals and of painting Mezzo-tinto Print”and is illustrated with a suite of 24 engraved plates (by an unknown artist) of designs of flowers, birds, insects and landscapes in the Oriental manner.
Such copies as survive are frequently incomplete – the authors suggest that owners remove the patterns for use as transfers – but the copy offered at Sotheby’s last month was not only complete, but in a contemporary japanned binding.
A variant issue of the first edition that gives only Parker’s name on the title page, it was part of the diverse Ronald A. Lee collection of antiques sold on November 28, and though the binding was very worn and had been rebacked (in 1822 according to a manuscript note on a pastedown), this singular copy of a rare work made £13,500.
Buyer’s premium: 20/15/10 per cent
Parker & Stalker’s very rare Treatise on Japanning and Varnishing
The earliest book in English on the subject, and described by H.D. Molesworth in his introduction to a 1960 reprint as “a work of art in its own right... as readily accepted for its literary content as for its technical information”, George Parker and John Stalker’s Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing... was the book that effectively introduced the process to Western craftsmen and one that had, as a consequence, a dramatic effect on decorative styles and fashions.
