{"product_id":"antique-french-natural-history-book-with-hand-colored-plates-lettres-a-sophie-paris-1822","title":"Antique French Natural History Book with Hand-Colored Plates, Lettres à Sophie, Paris 1822","description":"\u003cp\u003eLettres à Sophie sur la physique, la chimie et l'histoire naturelle by Louis-Aimé Martin, with notes by Patrin of the Institut, Tome Second, printed in Paris chez Lefèvre in 1822. Aimé Martin was the protégé, friend, and literary executor of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, author of Paul et Virginie, and the Lettres à Sophie are a series of letters written to an imagined woman, walking her through physics, chemistry, and natural history in warm, accessible prose that breaks into verse in places. It was a bestseller of its era, the science-for-the-drawing-room genre, reprinted across the 1810s into the 1830s.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe plates are the heart of it: hand-colored engravings printed hors-texte and protected by tissue guards. They include a brilliant bird plate with a golden pheasant, a mandarin duck, and the peacock-pheasant the French called l'éperonnier; a botanical plate of aristolochia, alstroemeria, and hibiscus; a mammal plate with a moose and a reindeer; and a marine plate of phosphorescent sea creatures. The binding is the original publisher's sage grey-green paper-covered boards with a printed paper spine label, and the rough untrimmed deckle edges show it was never trimmed or rebound.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCondition, disclosed plainly: the spine head is chipped with a loss at the top, the boards are rubbed and soiled, the label is worn, there is foxing throughout, and the plates show offset onto their tissue guards. This is Tome II only, volume two of the set, with roughly four hand-colored plates.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMeasures 8.5 by 5.5 by 1.25 inches.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eStyling: open it to a plate on a stand to show the color, or stack it with other antique books where the sage spine and worn label add quiet patina.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Foundresse","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56583102988454,"sku":null,"price":195.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0637\/7645\/6870\/files\/D8AD9BA7-0ECF-4214-9BE0-CFDCCEC19FAB.jpg?v=1780678096","url":"https:\/\/foundresse.com\/products\/antique-french-natural-history-book-with-hand-colored-plates-lettres-a-sophie-paris-1822","provider":"foundresse","version":"1.0","type":"link"}