Originating on the one side from a ramified family of newspaper publishers and journalists with collateral lines in book and art trade, on the other side from generations of farmers in the Altmark with French elements, whereby the grandfather was reputed for: two days a week for hunting, two for his farmers in court, two for the pub, and Sunday to church. So far the ancestors. I myself received, as by no means natural in the profession, a decent 3-years training as antiquary for books & art including a course at the German School for Book Trade then residing in Cologne on the banks of the Rhine with graduation from the Chamber of Industry and Commerce there, as second-best “cum laude”. With the turn of the year 1958/59 establishing with own business in Bad Godesberg (now Bonn on the Rhine) with downright drum-like opening sale: one of Menzel’s Uniforms of the Army under Frederick the Great produced exclusively for potentates in only 30 (sic!) copies of correspondingly excellent state. Followed three years later into the very same collection by a dream of a colored copy of Koberger’s “Ninth German Bible” of 1483. These starting gems had pilot character for the level cultivated till today in art trade & book shop, enriched not least by provenances read raptly and passed on in their élite corps of today and tomorrow. Like for instance copy no. 13 of the 20 luxury copies on vellum with richly gilt colored double suite of the plates in jewel-studded morocco of the inventory catalog of the jewels + preciousnesses of the collector prince J. Pierpont Morgan (“If one has to ask for the price one cannot afford it”) for which then directly, while I was just devoted to the pleasures of gardening, a call from Switzerland was received in the house, standing for a collection of equal quality, a connection which covered decades and doubtlessly originated in a daring-fresh Kubin illustration which – 1960 still prohibitively scandalous – asked for sympathetic attention on the front cover of my first catalog. With by the way yet some further actually very fine responses, one of which 40 years later congratulating with said catalog to the round jubilee.

And of course that catalog with a first drawing of 1741 – 50 years later on the occasion of Ridinger’s 310^th birthday Wild und Hund will pay a visit and portray per richly illustrated 6-page story his protagonists by now already overlapping generations – also laid the foundation for the exemplary specialty of the Ridingeriana of which over the years also a good many drawn and graphic preciousnesses gathered to the no. 13 of the Morgan Catalog. Opening above all yet also the occupation with the wealth of an œuvre which in the general comprehension, quite unjustly, through the times just stood for brilliant animal depiction of especially hunt & horses, while the connoisseurs directed their attention at the whole work and from art-historical side already in 1901 Ernst Welisch (Contributions to the History of the Augsburg Painters in the 18^th Cent., pp. 91 ff.) called the attention to Ridinger indisputably being the “most important Augsburg landscapist of this time”, though “mainly known as animal painter”. And 65 years later Wolf Stubbe, subsequently director of the Hamburg Print Room, reminded of “the rococo-bright light gleaming through of the whole wide scene (of sheet 12 of the Par Force Hunt as) the impressive evidence of Ridinger’s mature art of engraving! For it takes much artistic intelligence to achieve this just as delicate as animating effect of light. By it, if he knows to handle it, the engraver possesses a decisive means  for  one  of  the  most  essential  effects  the  art  of  engraving  can  achieve  at  all ” (Stubbe, Joh. El. Ridinger, Hamburg/Berlin, Parey 1966, in the series “The Hunt in Art”, pp. 14+16). Decades of intensive work here round about the œuvre finally unearthed even more far-reaching aspects of the work, making evident a downright modern Ridinger ahead of his time both in craftsmanship and especially intellectually-artistically. This led to invitations for lectures (i. a. Technical University Dresden on occasion of the ceremonial act to his 300^th birthday), specialized publications (i. a. Weltkunst), and references in museum catalogs as call in of expertise (i. a. Berlin inventory catalog [The German Paintings of the 18^th Century]). And if the Pompadour volumes from the series of Baron von Gutmann’s Marjoribanks folios – his Roman no. I vellum copy of his 2-volume collection catalog of 1910 available here – traded here in the 90s were the absolute acmes of the Ridinger trade here? Absolute ones positively, however certainly not “the” downright. A claim they have to part with further precious rarities however. And finally the raise of the Iron Curtain and German Re-Unification gave access to the master’s original printing-plates. Gems of which the hitherto absolute nimrod among the Ridinger collectors owned not one, not even could dream of for iron family property held them together for about 150 years! Their flagships now here then representing the master’s personally worked original plates for Thienemann 67/68. Hence the printing-plates to those imperial pendants which in both artistic and technical singularity among hunting prints of all times reckon to the finest hunting pictures at all. As  one  (sic)  plate  works  at the same time, however, shine as  monuments  sui  generis , almost beyond of any imagination of what even most fastidious collectors consider possible objectwise. Beyond that it shall not go unmentioned that the plate tastings here already start with the small-sized works of the Design set. Just as it is my general credo then:

either top item or plain fare , always due diligence in research , presentation + passing-on rule the doings of the house. And in no way ending with the conclusion of a sale, for gladly and without having to be asked I share new knowledge with the purchaser on their purchase, often even still decades later. Put me to the test and experience yourself why customers of all quarters use to “stick to the guns” here. I just congratulated one of the slowly decreasing ones of the first hour to his 95^th. Then his last acquisition did not date back very far yet. For in culture-old Rhineland, from where we moved in here for family reasons in 1995, it usually goes this way: go to the smith, and not to the little smith .

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What customers all the world over say about niemeyer’s …