Beautiful 1830 Handwritten and Handpainted German Pennsylvania Dutch Psalm Book

Full leather. Very Good +. A lovely one-of-a-kind Psalm book, handwritten and handpainted in a devotional, inspired hand (we believe that of Lena Margaretha Mullerin, whose intials {"L.M.M."} grace the front cover in gilt-lettering). The Psalm book is painstakingly recorded, accompanied by dozens and dozens of highly-skilled religious and floral touches throughout (including a number of full-page watercolors and many chapter/sentence headings). The script is eminently clean and legible in its native German, filling the entire book in roughly 200 pages of text born of a deep faith. The book still bears its original binding (no doubt executed by the family or, at the very least, by the tight-knit community) in a surprisingly attractive full dark-leather, with decorative, intricate gilt-tooling along the spine and at both panels. There's a bit of inevitable wear along the outer hinges, which, happily, are still strong and firm though. Thge text itself, the margins throughout and the preliminary pages, are very, very clean and show no soiling or spotting to speak of. The book measures 4" wide x 6 1/2" tall and boasts its original gilt-edges. Even the fore-edge shows a symbolic matching blindstamping at its top and bottom this bookseller has very rarely encountered. An unusually sharp copy of this early German Pennsylvania Dutch Psalm book, especially impressive given its almost 200 years.