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View full screen - View 1 of Lot 160. COLDEN, CADWALLADER DAVID | Memoir Prepared at the Request of a Committee of the Common Council at the Celebration of the Completion of the New York Canals. New York: Printed by the Order of the Corporation of New York, 1825 [1826].

COLDEN, CADWALLADER DAVID | Memoir Prepared at the Request of a Committee of the Common Council at the Celebration of the Completion of the New York Canals. New York: Printed by the Order of the Corporation of New York, 1825 [1826]

Lot Closed

June 21, 06:40 PM GMT

Estimate

3,000 - 4,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

COLDEN, CADWALLADER DAVID

Memoir Prepared at the Request of a Committee of the Common Council at the Celebration of the Completion of the New York Canals. New York: Printed by the Order of the Corporation of New York, 1825 [1826]


4to (9 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.; 248 x 198 mm). 45 engraved and lithographed plates, including portraits (one after George Catlin), lithographed title to the appendix, 2 large folding hand-colored engraved maps, views (some folding), and an additional 8 facsimiles of testimonial letters; occasional offsetting, some spotting, closed tears to folding maps and views, some neatly repaired with tape, occasional toning. Elaborate presentation binding ordered by the City of New York, bound by Wilson & Nichols, contemporary straight-grained bright crimson morocco, covers with broad elaborately gilt borders, upper cover gilt-lettered, reading "Presented by the City of New York to Miss Rachel Ann Robertson, Jany. 1st 1827," spine with raised bands in six compartments, third and fifth gilt lettered, others with repeat overall decoration in gilt, marbled endpapers, edges gilt; slight rubbing to extremities, minor soiling. [With:] An original silk ribbon and two elaborate engraved tickets (Miss Robertson's) to the celebration and a letter acknowledging Robertson's contribution to the volume, neatly laid in.


A sumptuous souvenir from the opening of the Erie Canal


Though initially deemed "Clinton's Folly" when first proposed by Governor Dewitt Clinton, the Erie Canal "proved to be the key that unlocked an enormous series of social and economic changes in the young nation..." The present work is one of the first books published in the U.S. to be extensively illustrated by lithography, and Rachel Robertson executed the plate facing p.380 from "The Students of Colombia College," "by a young Lady". A letter laid into the text acknowledges her contribution to the celebratory volume.


REFERENCES

Howes C-562


PROVENANCE

Rachel Ann Robertson (binding, and accompanying ribbons and tickets)— Jay T. Snider (his sale, Christie's New York, 22 June 2005, lot 143; bookplate to front pastedown) — Bonham's New York, 25 September 2018, lot 153