Ost- und West-Indischer wie auch Sinesischer Lust- und Stats-Garten

FIRST EDITION, 3 parts in one volume, [38], 1762, [36]pp., engraved half title and engraved coat-of-arms by C. N. Schurtz, engraved frontispiece, title in red and black, woodcut initials, head and tail-pieces, black letter, printed double-column, 65 copper engraved plates separated into 75 by binder and bound next to accompanying text, complete, some light foxing, worm holes to last few gathers, occasional very faint browning, new endpapers, later half leather over vellum, metal furniture and leather straps, red morocco label to spine, folio (323 x 203mm), Nürnberg: Endter Erben 1668

First edition of this encyclopaedia of curiosities pertaining to America, the East and West Indies and China, with imaginative depictions of plants, animals, human habitation, historical scenes, ceremonies, and mythical creatures. The 65 engraved plates include many devoted to botanical subjects.

Francisci, an editor at Endters, is considered to be among the most influential figures in the German Baroque period. He was a polymath writer, and the work contains a six-page bibliography listing some 250 books consulted. Francisci is considered “the first German bookmaker by profession” (ADB VII, 207) and knew how to win a wide audience for his books through partly dubious means. His curious anthology offered here, whose scientific claim can rightly be doubted, deals in the first two parts with the natural history of the West and East Indies with imaginative representations of some mythical creatures and monsters that the German reader expected in a description of the distant lands. The third part is dedicated to America and China, and here too the author uses all kinds of curious details in his presentation of customs, forms of government and institutions, which also find their expression in the illustrations.

[VD17 23:231724G. Dünnhaupt II, 15. Hayn/Got. II, 350. Lipperheide Ci 36. Nissen BBI 648. Sabin 25463; Alden & Landis 668/61; Borba de Moraes I:323]