THE HERALDRY OF NÜRNBERG, FROM A GIANT 17TH CENTURY BROADSIDE. Dated by the chronogram found on f. 1. Broadside, dissected and mounted onto 38 leaves of 19th century blue card, interleaved with blank paper. 4to. [19.5 x 16.3 cm]. Bound in 19th century marbled boards with title label “Felssecker[?]” on spine. 34 armorials hand-colored; a few numerical notations above and below each armorial – perhaps referring to entries in a heraldry manual? Remarkable example of creative amateur heraldry, assembled into a 19th century album. A giant 1675 broadside [originally measuring 113 x 46.5 cm] intended as a ‘New Year’s Greeting’ by the publisher Wolf Eberhard Felßecker (1626 - 1680) to the most important noble families of Nurnberg has here been transformed into an object of heraldic study. Each section has been cut out and mounted into a 19th century album, including a plausible ‘title-page’; the woodcut armorials are accompanied by biographical notices of each family and a four-line poem describing the heraldic elements of their arms. A few further letterpress sections give lists of contemporary judges, assessors, clerks, and craftsmen of the city; and on the rear endpaper we find a ‘Register’ in a clear 19th century hand of all of the family names found in the album. Accompanied by a 1917 issue of the journal Exlibris, Buchkunst und Angewandte Graphik, in which an example of the full broadside is reproduced on a large folding plate. The article, “Zur Geschichte der Glückwunschkarte” by W. von Zur Westen drew on items from the author’s personal collection. The original broadside is, as one might expect, horrifically rare – surviving as far as we have traced only in the Nürnberg Stadtbibliothek, and recorded as such in VD17. * VD17 75:709808R.