Vienne [Vienna], Gerlach & Schenk, 1886. Folio (53.8 x 38.2 cm). 196 plates (numbered 1-189, 1A, 13A, 20A, 34A, 72A, 167A, and 185A), mostly in chromolithography, several heightened with gold. In three uniform portfolios, red half cloth over pictural boards.

Edited by the German engraver, photographer and publisher Martin Peter Gerlach (1846-1918), who showed a great passion for natural history and decorative art, in particular Jugendstil illustrations. The plate captions are in French, German, and English. Among the participating artists, perhaps the most famous is the Art Nouveau painter and art professor Anton Johann Nepomuk Seder (1850-1916), renowned for his later works, D as Thier in der Decorativen Kunst, and Die Pflanze in der Decorativen Kunst. In the present work, however, his outstanding qualities as an artist are already fully present. This edition seems to be muich rarer than a German edition (i.e., the same plates with a German preface) and in fact both are rare in a complete state, as all the plates are very suitable to framing, leaving many sets broken up partly or entirely. Light wear to portfolios; short crease to the right lower edge of plate 34, small tear to the lower margin of Plate 99; two small stamps on the verso of Plate 59 (not shining through); some soiling to the margins of Plates 120, 156 and 158, otherwise a near-impeccable set. This copy is complete following the index, and bibliographies. The last title page erroneously states "Complet de 200 planches". Scheider-Henn, Ornament und Dekoration, 128 (German edition).