"Statuts de la société du tir-à l'arc, L'Union, installée à Poucques sous le patronage de son altesse royale monseigneur le duc de Brabant".

Folio (37 x 25 cm): [5] pp., on vellum, pen and black, red, green, and blue ink, title and initials enhanced with gold and silver (seal missing, some min. soiling).

Contemp. dark blue silk, boards decorated with a large gilt royal crown framed with gilt fillets and small tools, gilt lettered "HOMMAGE" on upper board, "RECONNAISSANCE" on lower board, doublures in the same silk orn. with a similar gilt frame and a set of large tools in the middle, white moiré silk endpapers. Beautiful copy.

Very nice presentation copy of the statutes of an archery society, adopted in Poeke (Aalter) on 16 January 1853, under the presidency of Viscount Alfred de Nieuport. Beautifully calligraphed and illuminated by François Magnée (1798-1865), "Calligraphe de S.M. le Roi" (sign. at the end of the doc.). Born in Mons, he worked in Paris and settled in Brussels at the end of the 1820s. He was also an intaglio printer for the Belgian Court. The binding, unsigned, must be attributed to the Brussels craftsman E.-S.-G. Mertens, who signed a similar binding, with the same materials and the same tools, on a poem by Eug. Stroobant addressed to Prince Leopold for his 18th birthday (see n. 341, and also n. 141).
Ref. Biogr. nat. XIII:153.
Prov. Prince Leopold Duke of Brabant (1835-1909), future King Leopold II. - [Goffinet].