Antique prints and engravings

Shells by George Knorr 1765

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Start price: £50

Estimated price: $125 - $240

Auction house commission:

This copper plate engraving is Plate XXIII from the 1765 edition of Les Delices des yeux et de l’esprit, ou Collection Generale des differentes especes de Coquillages que la mer renferme, communiquee au Public by George Wolfgang Knorr. Published in Nuremberg, 1765 The greatest eighteenth-century work of conchology, Knorr’s Delices, which began publication in 1757, gathers together the specimens of the Wunderkammern of Nuremberg, Amsterdam and beyond. There was a contemporaneous Latin edition, and a later Dutch edition. The glory of these engravings is the unusual vibrancy of colouring of the plates. The colourist has gone to the very extremes of her palette, supplying the warmest orange-reds and the subtlest variations of blue. The plates are in mounts and ready for framing. Plate size, 8in x 6in (20.5cm x 15.5cm) plus margins

Condition: The prints are in excellent condition – please inspect the images carefully