Complete Series of European Medals

London: Henry Hering, 1837. Lg. folio; x, 168pp. Plus a frontispiece and 40 plates with multiple images, done by an early photo-engraving process. Later ¹⁄₂ black calf, gilt ornamented spine, over textured gray cloth. A portion of the original brown cloth, gilt, with the printed title, is mounted on the front cover. Bound in at front are the prospectuses for 2 other contemporary medalic plate books. Very good; plates with some foxing (as is usual for this book); title page with some offset browning from the frontispiece; dark stain at top fore-edge of final plates (images not affected). Small oval library blind stamp at bottom of title page and one other leaf. This work covers the Napoleonic medals issued from May 18, 1804 to August 18, 1810. This is ​“all published”. A second part, to complete the work to 1815, was never published. A massive and elegant book with hundreds of coin engravings created by an unusual process that results in a three-dimensional and computer-pixelated like appearance. The plates are engraved by the process developed by Achilles Collas (1795–1859) in France in the 1830s. The illustrations were produced with a pantographic ruling machine, making them the most accurate every achieved prior to photo-plates. This technical innovation, widely heralded at the time, is relatively little known today. Scarce. At the time of cataloguing, no other copies for sale.