Le Caissier italien, ou L'Art de connoistre toutes les monnoies actuelles d'Italie ; ainsi que celles de tous les Etats et princes de l'Europe, qui y ont cours. Avec le détail des productions de l'Italie, les usages pour les lettres de change, la manière de faire les payements, les poids, mesures, et autres objets relatifs au commerce

First edition, cf. Quérard I, 271: only cites an edition "Paris, Née de La Rochelle, 1789." Kress B.1163. Goldsmiths 13858. Not in Einaudi.

With loose printed title pages for each volume, dated 1789.

The first volume, with an engraved title-frontispiece after Meunier, contains 52 double-page or folding plates inserted into the pagination, without following its numbering logic.

The second volume has an engraved title-frontispiece by Zaveris after Meunier and includes 154 etched plates of coins.

Full mottled calf, spines with six raised bands, gilt fillets and double gilt panels, red morocco title-pieces, green morocco volume labels, gilt rolls on the caps, double blind-ruled borders on covers, marbled endpapers, gilt fillets on edges, marbled edges, contemporary bindings.

Some restorations to the bindings.

Unique edition, very rare (the 1789 printing to which our two additional title leaves would correspond does not seem to be attested despite Quérard’s mention).

An excellent copy on strong vellum paper, large-margined, with the spines elegantly decorated with special gilt tools.

The author, a Lyon merchant, composed an impressive treatise on exchange and circulating coinage in Italy and Europe, which he had illustrated with great care: 154 unsigned copper engravings depict hundreds of gold, silver, and copper pieces then in use throughout the peninsula (Rome, Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, Gubbio, Naples and Sicily, Savoy and Piedmont, Tuscany, Milan, Mantua, Parma, Modena, Venice, Genoa, Lucca), as well as in France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Holland, and Ragusa. The final plate (numbered 173) shows Turkish coinage. The text volume contains highly valuable information on the economic life of the various states and provinces: trade, local production, manufactures, customs, banks, commercial courts, fairs, iron and steel mines (Brescia), bills of exchange, brokerage, "Manière de payer les foires d'Italie & celles du Levant" (Livorno), "Mont annexé aux Banques de Piété & des Pauvres" (Naples), spinning mills of Novi, factories of Schio, glassworks of Venice, etc.