Autograph letter signed [manuscript].

Germany, 1590.

1item

Text in English and Italian

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Corsini archive (Christies Robson Lowe 4 September 1984)

Germany.

FAST ACC 272106

Purchase made possible by The Albert H. and Shirley Small Acquisitions Endowment Fund. From dealer's description: "2. [CORSINI.] [An Elizabethan merchant’s notes in English & Italian totalling the prices of several pieces of cloth, with printed German woodcut to verso depicting the causes of decline of a mine.] [Germany, c.1590.] Manuscript, ink on single sheet of paper (14.5 x 19.5cm) 3 lines in English, verso with woodcut (approx. 11 x 3.5cm) aper browned, edges uncut, a few small tears. An intriguing Elizabethan mercantile scrap of c.1590 from the Corsini Archive, this sheet of paper is penned on one side with a cloth merchant’s notes in English in three lines in a secretary hand totalling the prices of several pieces of fabric (“9 yards of silk ... at 4s 4d ... black fustian at 14s”) with a further two lines in Italian. That these notes were penned in Germany is suggested by a large woodcut printed on the verso of the sheet. In four woodcut vignettes the main causes of the decline of a mine are depicted: war, death, demotivation, inflation. Text in German (“Gott Gibt Got Nimt Kriegs Terben Unlust und Teurung – Verderben Berckwerck und Handlung”) borders what appears to be a sixteenth century merchant’s mark. Whether the sheet was waste paper from a printer’s premises or was a discarded printed paper wrapper of some kind is uncertain. Though this cycle of mine decline is depicted in other sixteenth century Germanic sources we have not been able to trace another example of this woodcut. Provenance: Corsini archive (dispersed Christies Robson Lowe, 1984-1988)." Ordered from Samuel Gedge, D9420, 2020-11-23, Cat. 30 item #2.

272106