EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FURNITURE IN SOUTH AFRICA (1960)

Publisher's de luxe navy blue full-leather binding with embossed gilt titles on front panel and spine.

This de luxe edition was limited to 50 copies only and is signed and numbered by the author. This is copy #6.

193pp. Profusely illustrated with 223 black & white photographs and 64 scale drawings.

Binding tight. No inscriptions. Pages clean and white. The original invoice for this copy from J. L. van Schaik's bookstore to Dr. B. Agranot, including the errata slip, are neatly taped onto the penultimate blank leaf. An invoice is always interesting in terms of provenance and bibliography as it contains the original sale price, the date of sale, the bookseller's address, and the buyer's name & address. In this case the first owner was Dr. Barnes Agranat (1911-1987), a physician in Johannesburg.

"This book is written as a companion volume to my Eighteenth Century Architecture in South Africa. In it I have endeavoured to trace the development of furniture in South Africa, and to indicate the sources of the influences responsible for that development. During the period involved the burghers in Cape Town and the wealthy farmers in the country districts built lovely homes, many of which have been preserved, and filled them with beautiful pieces of furniture, silverware, china and glass. The standard of taste both in Holland and England, the countries with which the settlement at the Cape was most closely associated was, at the time, exceptionally high. Most of the pieces of furniture illustrated were made of South African wood in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries." - editor's note