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[ARCHITECTURE / DECORATIVE ARTS] / BONI, Andrea Album de’ principali Oggetti di decorazioni in terracotta estistenti nella Fabbrica di Andrea Boni e Comp[ania]. Milan Tipografia Pirola 1850

Folio [40 x 28 cm], (1) blank leaf, 19 numbered tinted litho plates, (1) leaf titled “Indice” with price table. Each leaf, including initial blank, stamped at bottom with small ink stamp “Andrea Boni e Comp. Milano.” Bound in original blue stitched wrappers, title hand-written on front cover, spine with contemporary marbled paper. Minor foxing on some plates, heavier foxing on price list, blank bottom right corner of plate XIX a little soiled. Otherwise very good, with excellent impressions of the plates.

Extremely rare illustrated trade catalog for the terracotta manufacturing company of Andrea Boni, documenting the 19th-century fashion in Renaissance- and Baroque-style terracotta decorations which he helped to found. The 19 tinted plates illustrate more than 70 items in the firm’s repertoire of fireplaces, mirror and clock surrounds, architectural cornices and moldings, stoves, basins and other architectural and ornamental elements in terracotta. Together with the itemized price list, the catalog also forms an interesting record documenting the Italian revival of Renaissance, Baroque – and, in one instance, Gothic – forms as historical quotations in architecture and design.The catalog consists of fine tinted litho plates depicting varying numbers of objects: plate V, for instance, is entirely dedicated to one large fireplace, while other plates show as many as six smaller ornamental objects like vases, lion’s heads, or human figures. For descriptions of the items the reader has to consult the price table, where they are grouped by type and identified in more detail. Amongst the “isolated figures,” for example, we find Flemish putti, Spanish and Calabrese figures, a small Cupid and so forth. The last two columns in the printed table were left blank, and in the present copy a neat hand has noted down the prices of each item. The final column may have been intended for customers to place orders or a clerk to mark sales.Andrea Boni, a native of Milan, revived the craft of fashioning intricate terracotta ornaments at a time when the Lombardian Renaissance style came back into vogue. His firm turned out large numbers of works from small vases to entire terracotta facades for a list of wealthy clients. Boni’s work can still be seen in Milan, as on the house of novelist Alessandro Manzoni, two facades of which were refaced with Renaissance-style ornaments by Boni in 1864. Not in OCLC or KVK or CLIO. Not in any bibliography, and no copy located.

$US3850

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