“EVERY MAN HAS, AT SOME TIME OF HIS LIFE, PERSONAL INTEREST IN ARCHITECTURE”: FIRST EDITION OF THE STONES OF VENICE, 1851-53

RUSKIN, John. The Stones of Venice. London: Smith, Elder, 1851-53. Three volumes. Royal octavo, contemporary three-quarter tan calf, raised bands, brown and red morocco spine labels, elaborately gilt-decorated spines. $3600.

First edition of Ruskin’s famous survey of the Gothic architectural style, illustrated with 53 full-page mezzotints and lithographs (many hand-colored), and numerous in-text wood-engraved diagrams and architectural details.

"A strange, unexpected and, I believe, most true and excellent sermon in Stones—as well as the best piece of schoolmastery in architectonics" (Carlyle). With its insistence upon a functional architecture, Ruskin's survey of the Southern Gothic style solidified his position as one of the most influential aesthetes of the Victorian era. "The Stones of Venice, along with Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), had immediate effects on the Gothic Revival of the High Victorian period and on the Arts and Crafts movement that followed in England. His influence during his lifetime is evident in contemporary buildings throughout Britain and beyond, from India to the United States. His work later helped form the views of, among others, Henry van de Velde, Frank Lloyd Wright and Walter Gropius" and contains what is "perhaps Ruskin's most potent writing, his celebrated chapter on 'The Nature of Gothic,' in which he praises the craftsman as designer" (Avery 265). Bound without publisher's advertisements. Grolier 100 English 92. Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England 31. Houfe, 286. Small bookseller tickets. Bookplates. Old dealer descriptions tipped in.

Interiors fine, inner hinges expertly reinforced, light wear to extremities of handsome contemporary calf.