THE GILBART PRIZE ESSAY ON THE ADAPTATION OF RECENT DISCO...
by Sharp, Granville
Third edition, first illustrated edition. (Bridson & Wakeman B59; Honeyman no.2844; absent from AMEX Coll. Cat.). A fascinating book. J.W. Gilbart, manager of the London and Westminster Bank, offered a prize for the essay that best showed how the articles and inventions shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851 could be put to service in the banking industry. This essay by Granville Sharp won. The first two editions did not include the illustrations and samples. For this third edition, the publisher collected handbills, trade catalogues, flyers, samples, and ephemera from each of the exhibitors and bound them with the essay. This edition thus served as a virtual trade catalogue for the banking industry. Among the widely varied specimens are checks, security paper and envelopes, watermarking techniques, paper samples, banknotes illustrating various engraving techniques, photographic reproductions illustrating procedures to foil counterfeiting of banknotes, seal cutters, and ink specimen sheets filled out by hand, as well as color lithographic illustrations. Also includes catalogues for office machine manufacturers and materials on bank buildings, interior decoration, plumbing, and security measures. This copy is missing eighteen plates and two are damaged, viz, #3 Perkins' Bank Note, with combination of difficult engraving, #3A Ditto "faced" upon Perkins and Co's patent for the prevention of anastatic and photographic forgery, #6 Fisher's bank note, printed by one impression, #7 Ditto, Bill of Exchange, ditto, #9 Batho's Water Colour cheque, "London and Westminster Bank", #11 Ditto, Water Colour and Copper Plate Cheque, at two impressions, "Harris and Co., Bradford", #13 Nissen's Cheques, upon paper tinted in the pulp, #13G-H, & 13J-M Various Lithographic Cheques and Imitations, #14 Portal's watermark for Bank Notes, by Moulds and Dies, #15 Saunders' Watermark, #16 Ditto, #17 Wildes' Floreated Watermark, #18 Saunders' Parchment Paper for Bank Notes, &c., &c., #89 Horne's decorations. #13F has the signature cut out, and #51 has the specimen envelope removed. The Honeyman copy was also missing other plates and, indeed, a check of all known copies would probably yield various plates missing in the different copies as these copies were individually put together from available samples. With the bookplate of Gavin Bridson. Front pastedown rubbed.
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