Beschreibung:

COSTUME -- Recueil général de coeffures de différents gouts, Où l'on voit la manière dont se Coëffoient les Femmes, sous différens règnes, A commencer en 1589 jusqu'en 1778 . Paris: chez Desnos, [1778]. Large 8° (228 x 145mm). Letterpress title with typographic border, 48 hand-coloured engraved quarter-page medallions showing hair-styles, each with accompanying engraved text; an additional two sets of 24 hand-coloured engraved costume plates bound-in. (A few neat repairs to the last four leaves.) 19th-century morocco-backed boards by Bernasconi. The first part of the work reproduces 48 different types of hair styles, both contemporary and from earlier periods. The following 48 plates reproduce contemporary fashion. The plates measure 70 x 115mm and were probably designed to be used in a 12° almanach. Most of the sheets are uncut, so that each page shows either four costume plates or two hair-styles and their two panels of engraved text, and the leaves are printed on one side only. The almanach publisher Desnos was well known for his unusual commercial habits: sometimes he would sell the same almanachs under different titles, or he would re-use plates in different works, 'Il ne faut point s'étonner pour si peu', comments John Grand-Carteret in Les almanach français , Paris, 1896, p. 134, 'Desnos en fera voir bien d'autres à ses acheteurs'. Desnos lated reused plates of the present volume in almanachs, for example in the Almanach de la toilette et de la coëffures des dames françoise published in 1779. Cohen-de Ricci 863