The Book of Marble

A Marvel in Marble
The true beauty of stone presented by Dutch publisher Jan Christiaan Sepp

Over the course of the 18th century, beautiful books that categorized, annotated, and illuminated the Enlightenment pursuit of learning across Europe had become increasingly popular. Knowledge was everything and everywhere, and these books provided it for those not wealthy enough to build their own personal collections of rare and exotic objects.

Published in 1776 at the peak of the Enlightenment, A Representation of Marble Types was one such edition: it depicted 570 samples across 100 color plates, accompanied by texts in five languages and took the standards of both aesthetics and categorization to a whole new level. Today, it is regarded, rightly, as one of the finest illustrated scientific books of the era.