The original Middle Eastern horse grooming mitt - the only illustrated edition

Goetz, F[rançois] J[oseph]. Par brevet d’invention. Gant hygiènique du cheval ou brosse arabe dite Kaffah propre à polir le poil.

Paris, (imprimerie de Sètier), lith. de G. Frey, [1829?].

8vo. Lithogr. title-page, 29, (1) pp., 1 blank fol. With 2 small illustrations on a lithogr. plate. Original grey lithogr. wrappers.

 2,500.00

First illustrated edition, previously published twice in Paris in 1828 as "Brosse hygiènique du Cheval" (with different page counts and without a plate). The present edition could be traced exclusively at the Biblioteca dell'Accademia delle scienze, Turin; the copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France appears to be a variant preserving the original title. In 1830 Baumgärtner in Leipzig published a somewhat more widely received German translation: "Der königl. privilegirte Gesundheits-Handschuh für die Behandlung des Pferdes. Oder arabische Bürste, genannt Kaffah, die Haut des Pferdes zu glätten" (31 pp., without a plate). A review, published in Prague in 1834, describes the author's patent: "This 'Kaffah' is a fabric of horsehair, in the shape of a long mitten into which the hand is stuck so as to groom, rub down, clean, and smoothen the horse without any danger of injury, so common in the use of a currycomb". This grooming mitt - "qafaz" in Arabic - supposedly was in wide use in the Middle East and offered numerous advantages in the army and cavalry, being exceedingly economical.

Untrimmed; occasional insignificant waterstains to the wide margins, otherwise very clean. The plate shows the "kaffah" rolled out for use and folded for travel. Very rare.

References

Menessier de la Lance I, 560. ICCU TO0\1167471. Cf. Huth 113 (German edition only). OCLC 457984303.

Stock Code: BN#50234 Tags: ,