Books and works on paper
‘L’Abbé Quille’, against whose leg a dog is seen relieving itself in the illustration right, is one of 84 hand-coloured plates – 12 each of seven subjects – that make up a French magic trick book of c.1799 sold for £2900 by Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium) in a June 19-20 sale.
In original marbled wrappers, it is an example of a ‘Blow Book’, in which a skilled operator could, by a quick blow and a swift rifling through the pages, produce different sets of images – dependent on which way up it was held and from which notch on the fore-edge it was thumbed.