United States Army. Uniform and Dress | First edition of the 1851 Regulations for the Uniform & Dress of the Army of the United States

The Passion of American Collectors: Property of Barbara and Ira Lipman

United States Army. Uniform and Dress

Regulations for the Uniform & Dress of the Army of the United States, June, 1851. From the original Text and Drawings in the War Department. Philadelphia: William H. Horstmann, 1851

Folio (375 x 286 mm). 25 lithographed plates after G. C. Humphries by P. S. Duval (5 chromolithographs, 6 partially handcolored); some soiling, generally in margins. Publisher's gilt-lettered cloth, plain endpapers and edges; rebacked in gray buckram, lightly worn at extremities.

First edition. This copy has a manuscript note in a contemporary hand affixed to the lower pastedown concerning colors for shoulder straps for various branches of the service. Below this are three swatches of wool fabric in various shades of blue.

Scarce. This is the only copy of this work to have appeared at auction since 1981.

REFERENCE

Colas 2520; see Lipperheide for later editions

PROVENANCE

Robert W. Chambers (bookplate; signature on front free endpaper dated 1909) — James S. Copley (Sotheby's New York, 15 October 2010, lot 710)