Testacea musei cæsarei vindobonensis, quæ jussu Mariæ Theresiæ Augustæ disposuit et descripsit Ignatius a Born, equ. S. Cæs. Reg. Apost. Majest. In re monetaria et metallica a consiliis aulicis. Academ. Scient. Imp. Nat. Curios. Petropolit. Londinens. Holmens. Göttingens. Tolosan. Upsaliens. Sienens. Manacensis &c. Sodalis
Vienna: Joannis Pauli Kraus, 1780. Second edition, expanded.
Folio (17 9/16” x 10 13/16”, 446 x 275mm): binder’s blank, *2 **–9*2 A–Zzzzz2, binder’s blank [$2 signed; –**1, *****1]. 248 leaves, pp. i–vii viii–xxxvi 1 2–442 [18] (17pp. index, blank). With an engraved vignette, numerous in-text engravings, and 18 engraved plates with original hand-color.
Bound in calf. Boards with an embossed and gilt foliate border. On the spine, 7 raised bands. Title gilt to red morocco in the second panel. With vinegar marbled endpapers and all edges of the text-block gilt and partially gauffered.
Spine cracked along the joints. Scratching and scuffing to the boards. Light peripheral tanning and oxidation, otherwise, a remarkably clean example. Evidence of an obliterated bookplate to the front pastedown. “24 C M / Kacz[n?]inszhy Lajos” inscribed in ink manuscript to the verso of the flyleaf.
Baron Ignaz Edler von Born (1742–1791) hailed from a noble family of Transylvanian Saxon origin and as a young man, had traveled to Austria to further his education at the Jesuit College of Vienna. Finding the Jesuits unstimulating, he left after only 16 months to pursue his true passion: mineralogy. Born traveled extensively through the Low Countries and during his studies, introduced a method of extracting metals by amalgamation (Uber des Anquicken der Erze, 1786). He additionally published two works of satire, one of which criticized the Jesuit Priest Maximilian Hell and the other (which he would send a copy of to Benjamin Franklin) classified monks with a Linnaean-like taxonomy. The resounding response was that Born should not quit his day job.
It was while he was working for Prague’s Department of Mines that he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, became a Fellow of the Royal Society, and caught the attention of Empress Marie-Therese. The Empress had been on a campaign to centralize and modernize the region’s institutions, which included the imperial museum at Vienna (K.k. Hof-Naturalienkabinette, the predecessor of today's Naturhistorisches Museum). Born was hired to arrange the collection and produce monographs of the museum’s holdings, but the works on shells were the only published results of this commission, which was apparently cut short by the Empress's death in 1780. Born’s first descriptive catalogue of the court’s shell collection was published in 1778 as an octavo with only a single plate. The present, more sumptuous work was released two years later and included an impressive 18 fine hand-colored engravings in addition to the smaller, uncolored plates within the text. Born’s academic pursuits were similarly cut short by his own death at age 48 — "During his visit to a mine at Felso-Banya…he descended into the mine too soon after fires used to detach the ore had been extinguished and inhaled a dangerously large quantity of arsenical vapors" (DSB).
The Empress’s collection of conchology still resides at Vienna’s Naturhistorisches Museum and Testacea musei cæsarei vindobonensis remains “One of the most beautiful of all conchological works” with “great importance to systematists, as Born described from it a number of species new to science” (Dance).
The present example was lot 118 of Christie’s London sale of Fine Books and Manuscripts on March 17th, 1999. The volume sold for £9,200 ($15,290, per the exchange rate on the day of the sale). Arader Galleries is offering the present volume at cost.
BM(NH) I, p. 202; S. Peter Dance, Shell Collecting An Illustrated History, pp. 93-94, no. 36; Nissen ZBI 470.
Cataloged by G.R. Murdock
Item #GRM0069
Price: $15,290