Vicente Castello Illus (1 results)

Condition: Very Good. Madrid: Imprenta del Colegio de Sordo-mudos, 1839. Tercera Edicion. Small octavo (13.5cm); publisher's custom-bound dark brown mottled calf elaborately tooled and lettered in gilt with black gilt spine piece, "Servanda Paul y Picardo" in gilt to upper cover, marbled endpapers; 108pp.; woodcut illus. throughout, including two full-page vignettes signed in image by the illustrator Vicente Castello. Gilt tooling to upper cover and spine partly perished with rather crude color infills, brief spotting to textblock; Very Good, internally clean and sound. Exceptionally scarce edition of this popular children's story picture book, one of the earliest pieces to be published by the student workers at the Imprenta del Colegio de Sordo-Mundos, formed just a few years prior, in 1835. The press went on to publish dozens, if not hundreds, of titles, including textbooks, government documents, and medical treatises, though this appears to be their only children's book. The press also ran an accompanying bindery, which almost certainly provided this attractive custom binding. "The printing press was staffed by deaf-mutes.the management of the press fell to the Deputy Director of the College.its regulations place special emphasis on the protections he must exercise over the deaf and mute students: he must ensure that they are treated properly without allowing them to be ridiculed, and he must ensure that they receive adequate reward for their efforts" (Rubio and Montagut). A contemporary account of a visit to the press confirms the humanity with which it was run, "not only providing intellectual and moral education for the Deaf-Mutes but also extending its efforts to ensuring that in the future they will have an honorable means of subsistence and not be a burden to society. To this end, it assigns them to the helpful art of printing, the most appropriate way to achieve these desired ends.They work there with pleasure and zeal, composing, distributing, and painstakingly executing all the works commissioned to them" (Ballasteros). OCLC locates a single copy in North America as of July 2026, at U. Florida (the second edition, also 1839). References (translations provided by David Rueger of Edition Altera): Jose Rubio and Eduardo Montagut: "La creacion de la Imprenta del Colegio de Sordomudos de Madrid," in Torre de los Lujanes, Vol. 27 (1994), pp. 273-85 Manuel Ballesteros, Revista de la Ensenanza de los Sordo-mudos y de los Ciegos (1851), p. 318. …