A charming 1790s compilation album of aquatints and engravings, many taken from James Baker’s Picturesque Guide through Wales and the Marches of 1795.
Small quarto (16.5x21cm) in red straight grain morocco with an elaborate border to the boards; wide raised bands to the spine; all edges gilt. Marbled endpapers with trace of a removed bookplate to the front pastedown. 83 pencil numbered pages - the final 3 are drawings, the rest engravings and aquatints. First section of the collection alternates between James Baker images of English country houses and Bluck after Baker’s images of Wales, so interspersing Festiniog and ‘The Birds Rock’ with Fitzroy Farm, Tunbridge School and Salop West Bridge, all 1790s. ‘Carnarvon’ is the first of Baker and Bluck’s oval images. ‘Low Harrogate’ Walker and Nicholson, 1796 is a rare excursion into the north; Brixton Downs, 1796, by F Jukes is the first coloured image. James Merigot’s Duneira aquatint takes us to Scotland with further images of ‘Birnam Wood’, Gilmerton Quarry, Rothwell, Stirling etc by the same hand. A pretty coloured ‘Plan of the Roads’ by Baker begins a sequence of around 30 images from his Picturesque Guide through Wales and the Marches with lovely coloured aquatints of the ‘Scene at Penkerrig’, ‘Wye near Lanvareth’ and sea ‘Bathing Place in Cardigan Bay...’ At the end of the volume there are a few images of Tothill and Westminster and 3 contemporary drawings of ruined castles with pencil notes about books on the verso.
