The Extremely Rare First Edition of Rüxner's Tournament Book with Hundreds of Woodcuts in a Contemporary Pigskin binding

Rüxner, Georg. Anfang : ursprung : unnd herko(m)en des Thurnirs in Teutscher nation. Simmern, Hieronimus Rodler, 1530. With 1 double-page woodcut illustration, 2 full-page coat of arms woodcuts, 135 large woodcut illustrations and 247 coat of arms. Folio (319 x 208 mm). Blind-tooled pigskin binding of the 16th century.

The famous Tournament Book by Georg Rüxner served the self-assurance of the knightly nobility »fit for tournaments« in view of the social upheavals in the early modern period. The splendid impression in Neudörffer’s Dürer typeface was published privately in 1530 by the art-loving Duke Johann II of Palatinate-Simmern, to whom the 135 mostly half- but also full-page woodcuts with battle and festival scenes and 247 woodcuts with coats of arms are also attributed. This first edition is of the utmost rarity and almost immaculately preserved.

The only copy in an old binding but far less well preserved was in the Harth Sale in 1985 and sold for Sfr. 85.000.

Provenance: From the estate of Hans Dedi (1918 - 2016), acquired in auction 126 by Tenner on 6 May 1980 in Heidelberg, no. 829 (DM 10,000).

Literature: Not in Adams; BM STC German 760; Brunet IV, 1471; cf. Davies, Fairfax Murray, German, Nr. 373 (only second edition!); Ebert 19557; Fünf Jahrhunderte 79; Graesse VI/1, 188; vgl. Lipperheide Tb 10 (not this edition!); Muther 1783; Nagler, Monogrammisten, III, Nr. 1039; Neufforge 425; Rahir 625; VD 16 R 3541; Vinet 2037.

This book has been described in great detail in our catalogue 90 “Wunderkammer”, lot 43, available in our Online Shop.

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