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1-800-99-BAUMAN

Famous Harness Horses

Geoffrey D.S. BENNETT

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Item#: 82744 price:$500.00

FAMOUS HARNESS HORSES, ONE OF ONLY 600 COPIES

(HORSES) BENNETT, Geoffrey D.S. Famous Harness Horses… Volume I. 1900-1915. London: Welbecson Press, 1926. Quarto, original cream cloth spine and brown cloth covers, top edge gilt, uncut. $500.

Limited first edition of Volume I of this illustrated history of British harness racing horses, this copy number 245 of only 600 copies. From the library of renowned sportswoman and sporting books collector Elisabeth “Pansy” Ireland.

Illustrated with 40 photographic portraits by W.A. Rouch. Foreword by Bertram W. Mills. This is Volume I, which covers the years 1900-1915; Volume II, covering 1916-31, was separately published several years later, in 1932, and the two are often offered separately. Owner signature, dated 1929, of Elisabeth “Pansy” Ireland, owner of Pebble Hill Plantation in Georgia and an accomplished horsewoman and collector.

Near-fine condition, with notable sporting provenance.

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Aquatint Copperplate process by which the plate is “bitten” by exposure to acid. By changing the areas of the plate that are exposed and the length of time the plate is submerged in the acid bath, the engraver can obtain fine and varying shades of gray that closely resemble watercolor washes. Although the name contains the word “tint”, this is a black-and-white printing process; aquatint plates can often be hand colored, however.
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Wood-Engraving Engraving made with the graver or burin on the cross-section of a piece of boxwood; the harder wood and finer tools allow for more delicate, finely detailed images, while the block can still be set in the page alongside text and printed on the same stock as the text. While much older, wood engravings enjoyed an important renaissance in the late eighteenth century through Thomas Bewick and continued in popularity thorugh the nineteenth century.
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