WILLIAM

PICTURESQUE REPRESENTATIONS OF THE DRESS AND THE MANNERS OF THE TURKS

ILLUSTRATED IN SIXTY COLOURED ENGRAVINGS WITH DESCRIPTIONS.

(Alexander WILLIAM)

London, c.1815

60 hand coloured plates (including frontispiece), by artist: OCTAVIEN DALVIMART, each facing a page of descriptive text, bound in full burgundy straight grained morocco, ornate gilt border to covers with inner blind border, gilt raised bands to spine, richly gilt in compartments, gilt title, gilt patterned board edges and inner dentelles (turn ins), all edges gilt, yellow endpapers. Slight rubbing to spine, yellow endpapers lightly dusty, occasional pale fox spot or faint browning to text pages, tiny pale mark to background of a couple of plates, faintest browning to white background of Plate 47, text leaf to that plate reinserted and very slightly dusty at top and fore-edge. A very good tight attractive copy. The plates show costumes and customs of the 18th century Ottoman Empire including Greeks, Albanians, Egyptians, Syrians, Tartars, etc. plus eunuchs, odalisks, other women, servants, a musician, a Jew, dervishes, officers of the Janissaries, soldiers, a naval admiral, the grand vizier and a few tradesmen. First published in French and in English in 1802 as The Costumes of Turkey. Attributed in the Preface to the French artist Octavien Dalvimart about whom little is known. It seems the text is by another, sometimes attributed to William Alexander, as one of the descriptions includes a comment made by Monsieur Dalvimart. William Alexander (1767-1816) accompanied the Macartney Embassy to China in 1792 as draughtsman and in 1808 was appointed assistant keeper of antiquities in the British Museum.