Tardieu andré

23881 — Paris Boulland 1825. 8vo 16.7 x 9.8 cm. viii 528 pp.; three engraved portraits of Haüy frontispiece Thénard opposite p. 177 and Biot opposite p. 337 12 folded engraved plates several tables. Contemporary full calf. Boards with gilt ornamented borders and dentelles front board with the large gilt vignette of the College Royal de Louis le Grand spine rich gilt and with green morocco label with gilt title. Marbled endpapers edges marbled. = This well-illustrated work introduces the mineralogical system of Haüy to a broader public. The author Ambroise Tardieu 1788-1841 was a French mineralogist cartographer and engraver. His son Auguste Ambroise Tardieu 1818-1879 was also an artist and a pioneering forensic medical scholar. This work has been written in the form of a dialogue between 'Mme de Beaumont' 'Gustave' and 'Caroline' and treats all kinds of minerals in 16 chapters. This Mme de Beaumont may well be based on an actual person but not the wife of the famous geologist Jean-Baptiste Armand Louis Léonce Élie de Beaumont 1798-1874 as he was single until in 1859 he married the poet Thérèse Marie Augusta Quélen 1806-1866. The title page states that there are 23 plates but that is an error. The 12th plate says: "Pl. XII et dernière". The plates mainly show crystal forms two plates include tools and one shows minerals. An extraordinary copy with additional portraits. The two "extra" portraits are in exactly the same style and on the same paper as Hauy's. However they are not recorded in any other copy. In fact several copies on the internet do not only lack these two portraits but lack the Hauy-portrait too. The extra portraits show the French chemist Baron Louis Jacques Thénard 1777-1857 and the French chemist physicist and astronomer Jean-Baptiste Biot 1774-1862. Top hinges starting otherwise a very good attractively bound copy. Not in Ward and Carozzi. hardcover