AMES, William

by William Ames

£3,750 · Offered by Sokol Books

Beautifully printed edition, in a very fine minuscule Roman, in a stunning contemporary French red morocco binding by Mac é Ruette for Habert de Montmor, one of the greatest collectors of Elz évirs of the C17th. Henri Louis Habert de Montmor (c. 1600, Paris 1679, Paris) was a French scholar and homme de lettres. An avid supporter of Descartes, Habert wrote a poem on Cartesian physics entitled De rerum naturae and collected scientific instruments. He was a friend of Mersenne, who dedicated his Harmonie Universelle to Montmor, and a great friend of Pierre Gassendi, who dedicated to him his Life of Tycho Brahe. Gassendi also left him an astronomical telescope he had been left by Galileo. Three years after Gassendi s death, Habert edited his complete works in 6 volumes, writing its Latin preface. Besides Gassendi, he gathered a salon of savants and philosophers which included many of the great scholars of the day. He also initiated the bibliophilic tradition of collecting elz évirs, and amassed a remarkable collection of these little masterpieces of Dutch typography. Preserved during his lifetime in his hotel in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, the collection was dispersed in 1682. From 1620 to 1635, he acquired the volumes as and when they were published, and confided the binding to Mac é Ruette, one of the most renowned Parisian masters of his time. Six bindings with the same characteristic decoration are listed in the Catalog II of the Esmerian Library (Nos. 8 to 13). Interestingly

• Binding: Hardcover

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