18th CENTURY GERMAN MANUSCRIPT CHEMIST / DYERS BOOK

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18th CENTURY GERMAN MANUSCRIPT CHEMIST / DYERS BOOK Picture(s) and Description:

floyd821 Store Acquired from an estate. This listing is for an 18th Century Manuscript Chemist / Dyers Book. Medium octavo size, (7" x 8.75") with brown calf spine, vellum covered card stock boards, plain paste downs and end papers with 262 pages of untrimmed laid paper, hand sewn binding with leather and string closure ties. This fascinating book, likely compiled in the early 1700's, based on the style has 220 inked manuscript pages, many with bold "Kurrent" or Gothic cursive script in a very legible hand. Unfortunately I do not know German. We were able to roughly translate some things. Many of the pages have larger Kurrent headings in a bright red ink, being the title of the page and an indication of the contents of the following text. The first part of the book appears to be mainly formulas for cloth dyes. The book appears to be the work of Johannes Hoffweit and the title page, which is entirely in bold red inked Kurrent script includes his name and also the mention that it also contains a receipt section found twoards the back of the book, but the dates are in text, not numeric. There are many other fascinating items within this book such as the Latin word square, or palindrom: sator arepo tenet rotas The literal translation is "the farmer uses his plough as his form of work". Many believe this word square to have magical connections and some take to be an ironic aphorism meaning "God holds the plough, but man or you turn the furrows". There are also a series of geometry drawings with accompanying text, several finely drawn tables, formulas for gum arabic, lemon syrup, peppermint syrup, and much more. The receipts appear to be for fairly common items such as "kaffee" (coffee), others are more unusual, such as "Bordell" which translates as Brothel, or house of prostitution. This very interesting manuscript deserves the attention of a German language translation to fully understand and appreciate. The condition is fairly nice for it's age. The boards are quite worn, and the edges are somewhat stained, but almost all the manuscript text is legible. See photo's, email with any questions. Shipping is usps priority. We will ship by other means if requested ie; media mail or parcel post. We accept paypal. Thank you for viewing this listing, see our other auctions for more antiques and collectibles.