Marrin's Bookshop

Synopsis

The jacqueline and jonathan gestetner collection.

Item Description

Folio. 12 x 9.5 inches. 270 pp. Bound in original blue cloth, gilt, in pictorial dust wrapper. As new condition. Signed on title page by Jonathan Gestetner. Illustrated throughout in colour. Pictorial endpapers A catalogue of the 378 peepshows in the Gestetner Collection, preceded by several introductory chapters. The concept was originally developed in Augsburg in the mid-eighteenth century and by the 1820s had reached a standard format in which the paper peepshows formed the interior of an expanding bellows. Viewed through the peephole the scenes could be explored in detail giving the illusion of having entered into them. The collection, housed at the V and A Museum was assembled by Jonathan Gestetner, formerly of the reprographic machinery company and later a seller of rare books and a serious collector of panoramas, dioramas and various optical games, especially the peepshows. By Ralph Hyde (1939-2015), who was a specialist on the subject of panorama paintings and Keeper of Prints and Maps at the Guildhall Library, London. An attractive Antique Collectors' Club publication.