1780 - ROTH, Ch. M. Two costume plates showing natives of Kyrgyzstan

Uncommon copper-engraved costume plate showing two natives of Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian country along the Silk Road, the ancient trade route between China and the Mediterranean.
From the Johann Gottlieb Georgi "Beschreibung aller Nationen des russischen Reichs" (1776), the work stands out for the hand-coloring of its 75 plates of costumes, all labeled in Russian, German and French, and often showing both the front and back view of costumes.

Johann Gottlieb Georgi (1729–1802) was a German botanist, naturalist and geographer and worked for Catherine the Great's Russian Enlightenment, and undertook the first scientific ethnographic study of Greater Russia, enquiring into the cultures on the fringes, the Finns, Tatars, Samoyeds, Manchurians, Mongols and Cossacks. He published the earliest scholarly account of Siberian Shamanism and Mongol Buddhism. All of these ethnic groups are illustrated in this superb suite of plates, with great attention paid to the details of their characteristic costume.
Georgi was particularly interested in the Baikal region. Based on collections from far eastern Russia, in his 1775 publication "Bemerkungen einer Reise im Russischen Reich im Jahre 1772".
Georgi provided the first botanical descriptions of many of the region's flowering plants, among them the Baikal Scullcap (S. baicalensis.) Many of these plants and herbs were later collected by European botanists in China, and thereafter became rare specimens in European botanical gardens.
After his fellow botanist and traveling companion Falcke took his own life in 1774, Georgi edited his notes which were published in Germany in 1785 as "Beyträge zur topgraphischen Kentniss des russischen Reichs I.III".
In 1790, Georgi's German work of the description and urban plans of the city of St. Petersburg was published. It appeared in a second edition in Riga in 1793, and was finally translated into Russian a year later. His Geographisch-physikalische und Naturhistor. Beschreibung des Russ. Reiches, a nine-volume edition of the geography and natural history of the Russian Empire, was published in Königsberg, Germany, during 1797 - 1802.

Reference: Lipperheide Kaa10; Hiler p.364; Colas 1223; Cat. (...) des Russica 336.