(TRADE CATALOGUE-HOUSE PAINT)  SEELEY BROTHERS.  MANUFACTURERS OF AVERILL PAINT, READY FOR USE.

TRADE CATALOGUE-HOUSE PAINT)  SEELEY BROTHERS.  MANUFACTURERS OF AVERILL PAINT, READY FOR USE.                                                  

New York: Seeley Brothers, 1886. Folio. Publishers blind-stamped cloth. Lithographic title leaf, (8) pages, 20 chromolithographic plates, each with descriptive text facing, (3) folios of advertisements, one with paint samples, which includes 2 chromolithographic plates with 1 incorporating 12 flat pastel paint samples. First edition.  [McKinstry, 1456; Romaine, p. 260].

Rare paint trade catalogue with only one copy of the 1886 edition and two copies of the 1889 edition listed on OCLC.  "In 1875, the architect Elisha Charles Hussey boarded a transcontinental train to survey the state of American architecture.  The resulting book, Home Building...from New York to San Francisco, (N.Y., 1876), contained 42 plates.  A decade later Seeley Bros. Paint Co. recycled several of Hussey's designs as full-color lithographs. These plates are among the most informative to survive for details of late Victorian exterior decoration...Picking out in bright color was relatively rare in the third quarter of the nineteenth century...The Seeley Brothers Company seems consistently to have advocated gayer treatments than Sherwin-Williams, Devoe, or Lucas." (Roger Moss, Century of Color. Exterior Decoration for American Buildings 1820-1920, page 49).  Of considerable value as architectural documents, house paint catalogues such as this by Seeley are also among the most interesting American color plate books.  The introductory text contains testimonials, advertisements, and comments of the manufacturers, and one folio leaf of forty glossy paint samples with folio descriptive text facing with four and a half chips missing - not uncommon with paint catalogues.  Generally in very good condition.

$7,250.00