Illustrated editions

In antiquarian bookselling, the illustrated edition occupies a territory where text and image are united: woodcuts of the incunabula and the sixteenth century, copperplates of the classical age, lithographs and etchings of the livres de peintre, down to the great bibliophile enterprises of the twentieth century.

The bibliophilic interest here lies in the quality of the printing, the condition of the plates, the sometimes exceptional collaboration between an artist and a publisher, and the rarity of copies on large paper or enriched with additional states. Here the collector rediscovers that ever-singular encounter between the hand of the engraver and that of the writer.