The complete deck of James Moxon’s ‘Geometrical’ cards of the 1690s sold by Bonhams at £10,500.
The son of the much more famous Joseph Moxon, who produced some of the earlier recorded printed globes, as well as a set of astronomical playing cards in 1676, James is known to have collaborated with his father on several projects from the 1680s onwards.
This rare deck, which sold for £10,500, was offered in a September 28 sale of Instruments of Science & Technology at Bonhams (27.5/26/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) in Knightsbridge.
When Gloucestershire saleroom Dominic Winter sold an incomplete, 43-card deck of the cards, dated 1697, for £2000 in January of last year, it noted that the only other deck it could trace was that held by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale.
That deck was accompanied by a book, The Use of the Geometrical Playing-Cards, As also a Discourse of the Mechanick Powers. By Monsi. Des-Cartes. Translated from his own Manuscript Copy…, printed and sold by J Moxon at the ‘Atlas in Warwick-Lane’, 1697.
A facsimile copy of that work was also offered as part of the Bonhams lot.
