L'art Islamique en Orient, important architectural book by Raymond

This impressive and important folio is the second part (or deuxième partie) of Alexandre M. Raymond’s influential L’art Islamique en Orient, published in Prague by M. Schulz in 1924. The first volume of Raymond’s work focuses on ‘Vieilles faïences Turques en Asie Mineure et à Constantinople’, or ancient Turkish faience in Asia Minor and Constantinople. This second volume, however, subtitled ‘Fragments d’architecture religieuse et civile’, takes as its subject architecture and architectural forms found in modern day Turkey.

The folio is bound in tooled green cloth, with a brown paper dust jacket. The volume includes a chromolithographed title page and dedication page, as well as illustrated text and some sixty colour plates, which depict elements of architecture, including portals, windows, iron work, and façades, of mosques, minarets, and mausoleums. Portrayed in the volume is architecture from Konia, Brousse, Sivas, Constantinople, Yenicheir, and Iznik, amongst others.

Raymond was a French architect who lived for several years in Constantinople (now Istanbul). He spent much of his time drawing Seljuk and Ottoman monuments in the city and in Asia Minor more generally. The present volume is an important work of architectural history, a beautiful piece of Orientalist scholarship, and, simply, a breath-taking artistic achievement.