Marie Laurent - Album Amicorum - 1900

A beautiful manuscript album amicorum. Expensively bound in black leather, with dark blue and gilt monogrammed end papers. The outside is discreet and simple, but there is gilt decoration and dentelles to the inside boards. No titles. Possibly an "off the shelf" blank book purchased for the purpose. There is a beautiful watercolour of two windmills by the water's edge to the front. This appears to be a Dutch landscape, from the Delft blue colour palette and the costume of the figure in the foreground. The work is signed Marie Laurent. Soissons, 26/1/1900. The rest of the work is 68 pages of neat text, with poems, comments and prose inspirational passages, mainly from famous French authors, all written in French. Although most of this is in a variety of different handwriting, the last tale, which is 24 pages long, is entitled "les trois messes basses" (a Christmas short story by Alphonse Daudet) and is in a neat hand all by same writer. There are finally perhaps 150 blank pages. A beautifully presented book. Soissons is a commune in the northern French department of Aisne. 18.5 x 13 cm

Estimate:£127.23

View all items fromCatawikiorBooks, Maps & Manuscripts