BIBLIOTHECA BIBLIOGRAPHICA BRESLAUERIANA Felix de Marez Oyens Any short-list of the greatest antiquarian booksellers of the 20th century would have to include Breslauer, father and son. Martin Breslauer set up shop in Berlin in 1898 and soon acquired a European-wide reputation as one of the most erudite bibliographers in the trade. His catalogues astound today's collector of rare books and manuscripts with its riches and risk discouraging him with the contrast they reveal between the choice available then and now. This is not the place to enumerate his many literary discoveries or the collections he brought to light; the mere mention of the Stolberg Library from Wernigerode and the rediscovery in Vienna of the books belonging to Napoleon and Marie-Louise (many now at Malmaison) will have to suffice. In order to make his family's escape from Nazi Germany financially possible, Breslauer was forced to sell two thirds of his matchless reference library to Martin Bodmer in Zurich, keeping only the basic bibliographies and catalogues needed for re-establishing himself in London, near the British Museum. This loss of the firm's collection profoundly marked the son, then 18 and barely out of school. Bernd Hartmut, later Bernard, was born in 1918 and a published poet in his teens, whose literary talents were recognised by the famous Austrian novelist, Stefan Zweig, and by Fedor von Zobeltitz, editor of Zeitschrift für Bücherfreunde. After his father died in 1940 as the result of a direct hit on the Bloomsbury mansion block where he lived and after having served for more than four years as a volunteer in the Alien Pioneer Corps of the British Army, Bernard slowly but brilliantly revived the fortunes of his father's company. He was a keener businessman than Martin had been and in several fields also became the greater expert, notably on historical and artistic bookbindings. As he began to advise more collectors, gaining their confidence with his connoisseurship, energy and enviable memory, and as his prosperity grew, Bernard Breslauer rebuilt and extended the reference library. It never quite reached its former proportions, but in some respects grew to be more important. Dr. Breslauer - the honorary doctorate of letters was conferred on him by the Free University of Berlin in recognition of his contributions to bookbinding history and bibliographical scholarship - bought bibliographies, catalogues, monographs on manuscripts, printing history, bibliophily, studies on fine binding, etc. as rare books, objects worthy of pursuit and passionate collecting, not merely as reference tools. He had some predecessors with this approach and a very few contemporary rivals to fear, but his extraordinary tenacity, bibliophile taste, historical knowledge and wide contacts were quite unique, as was his willingness to pay high prices for special copies. He concentrated on vellum printing, large-paper and blue-paper issues, presentation and association copies, manuscript catalogues, distinguished provenances, and copies in decorated bindings; in addition and most unusually, he commissioned fine bindings for his own authoritative publications from the foremost Parisian artists, such as Paul Bonet, Pierre-Lucien Martin, Thérèse Moncey, Germaine de Coster, and Jean de Gonet. Dr. Breslauer's connections with Christie's go back to before the Second World War, when he began to make his appearance in our rooms in St. James's. His performance at the Curtis Institute sale at Christie's Park Avenue in 1978, when he bought all the greatest Wagner manuscripts for Bayreuth, is unforgettable to those who witnessed it, and the purchase on behalf of the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart of the General Theological Seminary Gutenberg Bible for the then world-record price of two million dollars hammer, again at Christie's in 1978, marked his finest hour. This spring Christie's is selling in three portions the Bibliotheca Bibliographica Breslaueriana. Visitors to the exhibitions of treasures from it, organized at the Wittockiana in Brussels in 1986 and at Harvard's Houghton Library in 1991, will understand that it is impossible to summarize the rarities that will be offered. The following sculpture and works of art all formed part of Dr. Bernard Breslauer's extensive and sophisticated collections. Of particular note are the cuir bouilli and other leather Renaissance boxes with their high-relief and precise incised decoration and the later boxes with their dazzling gilt-tooled surfaces. It is a stunning collection of highly wrought works of art and the condition - considering the delicacy of the material - is exceptional. Provenance plays a significant part in the Breslauer collection. A book-form missal box, probably made in Milan in the second quarter of the 16th century, is inscribed 'Renata di Francia'. The daughter of Louis XII and Anne de Bretagne, Renée de France married Ercole II D'Este, the son of Alfonso I and Lucrezia Borgia. The Breslauer 'book' that comes closest to sculpture is the jewel-like wax relief portrait of Pope Pius V (Michael Ghislieri, Pope from 1566 - 72) which is enclosed within a leather book-form box. Signed Capocaccia, it was commissioned for the papal library between 1566 and 1568. And, amazingly, this relief is cited by Vasari himself in the second edition of his VITE of 1568. Felix de Marez Oyens is a member of Christie's International Advisory Board PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF DR. BERNARD BRESLAUER (LOTS 321 - 347)

AN EMPIRE TWO-TONE ORMOLU NINE-BRANCH CANDELABRUM CENTERPIECE

SIGNED 'THOMIRE A PARIS', CIRCA 1810

Details

AN EMPIRE TWO-TONE ORMOLU NINE-BRANCH CANDELABRUM CENTERPIECE
SIGNED 'THOMIRE A PARIS', CIRCA 1810
The dished stiff-leaf rimmed bowl with removable rim issuing scrolling foliate branches with lotus-leaf nozzles and removable drip-pans, on three swan-headed scrolling supports joined by a foliate rim and reminating in foliate scrolls, centered by a double baluster staff and on a cylindrical base with ribbon-tied fruiting garlands and flanked by flaming altars, on a stiff-leaf base, signed to the base
26 in. (66 cm.) high, 17 in. (43 cm.) diameter

Lot Essay

Pierre-Philippe Thomire (1751 - 1843) studied under both the 18th century sculptors Pajou and Houdon and the bronzier Gouthière. But by the early 19th century he had become famous for his gilt-bronze furniture mounts, clocks, candelabra and other table decorations. His firm was one of the most successful of the Empire period although it continued well after his most famous patron Napoleon left France, even into the 1850s. From 1819 the company was known simply as Thomire & Compagnie.

The upper section of this candelabrum centerpiece is identical to that of a pair at the Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (H. Ottomeyer, P. Pröschel, et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol. I, p. 382, fig. 5.16.1).

More from IMPORTANT EUROPEAN FURNITURE, WORKS OF ART AND CARPETS

View All