Search Results: Botanicals from Charles Agvent

Boston: R. Bowyer, 1817 - 1820. First Edition. Hardcover. Scattered toning, some offsetting and mild foxing, wormhole to upper margin at the front few pages of the first volume; small library blind-stamps to titles and to all plates; mild rubbing and repairs to the binding. Very Good. Three octavo (6-5/8" x 9-7/8") volumes bound in 19th century black half-morocco leather with matching corners and marbled boards. Illustrated with 60 engraved color plates, the first 10 hand-colored and the others color-printed. FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST AMERICAN BOTANICAL BOOK as well as the first book with color-printed plates produced in America. Bigelow received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and was professor of medicine and botany at Harvard College.

London: James Nelson & Co., 1859. Third Edition. Hardcover. Text, mostly unopened, is a little aged but except for some light spots of foxing here and there the plates are clean; contemporary gift inscription on the half-title page. Near Fine in a handsome binding. Quarto (9" x 12") in 1/2 modern dark green morocco leather and older marbled boards with gilt rules, lettering and decorations. Illustrated with 60 hand-colored lithographs with tissue guards. The first two plates are bound out of order.

(New York): (Martino Publishing), [1991]. Reprint. Hardcover. Fine, issued without dustwrapper. Two volumes in red cloth; lxxxiv, 517; ccxliv, ix, 655 pages. Reprint of the 1958 and 1961 editions. Illustrated with a few plates. Limited to 400 copies. A useful and authoritative bibliography of one of the greatest collections of botanical books and manuscripts covering the period of the 12th through the 18th centuries.

Brussels: F. Havermans, 1897-1907. First Edition. Softcover. Library labels on spines and penciled numbering on title leaves but no library marking to contents. Plates overall very good to fine, a few of the folding plates splitting along the crease, some plates with small adhesion spots from opposing leaves. Very Good or better and quite scarce. Collection of original parts (7-1/4" x 5-1/2") housed in publisher's purple cloth folders with gilt lettering and ribbon ties along with a small pamphlet containing a table of plates: DICTIONNAIRE ICONOGRAPHIQUE DES ORCHIDEES. TABLE DES PLANCHES. Bruxelles: Vandievot, [1902]. Apparently complete work with approximately 824 fine chromolithographed plates of orchids, including a few folding, with accompanying descriptive text. Goossens, perhaps the greatest of all orchid painters, illustrated this rarest of all serially-published orchid iconographies with only 250 examples published. NISSEN BBI 2236n. A total of 17 volumes, plus index, with the larger genera… Read More

Halle: Johann Gottfried Trampe for Johann Christoph Breitkopf in Leipzig, 1760 [-1764]. First Edition. Hardcover. Some mild offsetting from the strength of the colors, a few plates with light spotting to fore-margin. Near Fine and quite scarce. Folio (8-3/4" x 14-3/4") bound in twentieth century brown half-morocco leather. Illustrated with 200 hand-colored, nature-printed plates with letterpress legends in Latin and German and with additional legends neatly added in ink in a contemporary hand. The ONLY edition of THE MAJOR COLORED NATURE-PRINTED BOOK OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Published over four years in eight parts with a series of 25 plates in each, the plant took the place of the woodblock or engraved plate in the process of reproduction. With the specimens arranged and covered with a dark dust, the outlines formed on the paper were then colored either by hand or a combined color-printing and hand-coloring process. The specimens were delicate and could sustain only the smallest of print runs.… Read More

London & New York: Frederick Warne, 1896. First Edition. Hardcover. Attractive bookplate on front pastedowns; interiors clean and colors bright; light foxing affecting endpapers and bulked text edges. Light soiling to boards with pink dye stains to upper board of fourth volume; spine labels chipped. Near Fine. Four 6-1/2" x 9-3/4" volumes bound in publisher's 3/4 vellum and green cloth, gilt-lettered green morocco spine labels. Complete with half-titles and 316 chromolithographed plates with tissue guards.

Leipzig: Gebruder Baensch, 1860-1861. Third Edition. Hardcover. Light, occasional foxing to the text, plates quite clean and bright; minor wear to covers. Near Fine. Two quarto (7-3/4" x 10-1/2") bound in publisher's cloth-backed marbled paper-covered boards. Revised edition of this scarce treatise on plant specimens native to the German wilderness. Illustrated with 300 hand-colored engraved plates of local forest plants, flowers, trees, shrubs, grasses, flowers, ferns, lichens, mosses, mushrooms, etc. Scarce.

London: John Murray, 1910-1914. First Edition. Softcover. Plates strong and fresh; occasional paperclip impression at very top margin of some pages including plates; some pages loose or detached; light wear to wrappers, somewhat heavier wear to slipcases. Near Fine and quite scarce in original wrappers. Alfred Parsons. Folio (11" x 15") in printed wrappers housed in two green morocco-backed slipcases with chemises. The complete set of 25 individual parts of the most important work on roses in the twentieth century, illustrated with 132 chromolithograph plates after watercolours by Alfred Parsons, 87 black and white plates, and numerous illustrations in the text. RIX, THE ART OF THE BOTANIST, 1981: "The first great colour-printed book of the twentieth century … it still stands unrivalled, both as an account of the species and as a source of illustrations of wild roses." Ellen Willmott (1858 - 1934) was a celebrated English horticulturist, prominent member of the Royal Horticultural Society, one of… Read More

Paris: Baudouin Freres, 1821-1822. Third Edition. Hardcover. Foxing to text and plates, though less so to the latter; both covers detached. Good with attractive plates. Pierre Joseph Redoute. Large quarto (10" x 13-1/2") bound in contemporary red leather-backed boards, all edges gilt. Illustrated with 64 (of 65) stipple-engraved plates, printed in color and finished by hand, by Bouquet, Gabriel, and others after Pierre Joseph Redoute. NISSEN 1688; (STAFLEU) GREAT FLOWER BOOKS page 74: " This work is Redoute's last link with the ancient regime: his old patrons had all died, or like Cels, who died in 1806, had ceased to be influential. Redoute had entered easily into a new life under the Empire. On the whole, it can be said that it is remarkable how little Redoute was affected by the political and social changes that took place around him." Rousseau was an amateur botanist whose interest in the subject was heightened by his enforced exile amonts the natural beauties of Switzerland.

Paris: Chez L'Auteur, 1828-1833. First Edition. Hardcover. Scattered light to moderate foxing, affecting the text more than the plates; covers tight with the backstrip of the first volume largely detached. Very Good. Jaume Saint-Hilaire. Six quarto (7" x 11") volumes bound in three in contemporary calf-backed marbled boards. Illustrated with 544 plates printed in colors and finished by hand. Rare and important collection of French botany by the naturalist and artist Jaume Saint-Hilaire (1772-1845). DUNTHORNE page 4: “It is not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that precise scientific drawing commences to characterize French flower plates but with the transition the French artists such as Jaume St. Hilaire, Bessa, Turpin and Redouté rose almost immediately to world pre-eminence. These names are collector's high points”; NISSEN 988; PRITZEL 4404.

Paris: J. Rothschild, 1880. First Edition. Hardcover. Light, scattered foxing, including to some plates; bookplate on front pastedown; light rubbing to joints. Very Good. Quarto (7" x 11") bound in 3/4 burgundy morocco and marbled boards with gilt rules and lettering, five raised bands, top edge gilt. Illustrated with 50 fine chromolithographed plates, finished by hand, with tissue guards, and 244 figures in the text.

Philadelphia: Atkinson & Alexander (first volume); Samuel C. Atkinson (second volume), 1828 & 1830. First Edition. Hardcover. Minor chip here and there; plate 26 with clean horizontal tear with no loss; contents generally clean and binding Fine. Overall Near Fine. Two duodecimo (4-1/4" x 7-1/4") volumes bound in recent burgundy cloth-backed off-white boards with title information printed in black on both boards and printed white paper spine labels, new endpapers. Illustrated with 100 plates printed in green ink on varying sheet sizes. In this work, of which a projected third volume was never published, Rafinesque attempted to provide a comprehensive guide of native flora for the use of American doctors and pharmacists. Rafinesque made important botanical explorations on his 2,000-mile tour, mostly on foot, to the west of the Alleghenies in 1818. This work includes a number of previously unpublished Native American remedies. Garrison-Morton 1849; Nissen, Botany 1579; Norman 1774; Pritzel 7401; Sabin 67457.

London: James Ridgway, 1828-39. First Edition. Hardcover. Occasional spot or stain but the color is quite bold and fresh. Many plates with a small sticker or faint pencil notation in the upper blank margin not affecting the image. Bindings mostly broken with many loose pages but all text and plates are present. Bindings fair, plates Near Fine. Volumes I - II (of 3) in contemporary calf leather-backed boards, octavo (6-1/4" x 9-3/4"). Illustrated with 96 hand-colored engraved plates, 3 folding, by S. Watts and W. Clark after Mrs Augusta I. Withers and Charles M. Curtis, many heightened with gum arabic. The missing third volume brought the total plate count to 152. Pomologist Robert Thompson provided the core of the text. The Magazine was published "in the hope of protecting the public ... a nurseryman not possessing a variety is no proof that it is undeserving ... although it may be an evidence of his own want of enterprise" (POMONA'S HARVEST, page 306). The work was reissued in 1841 as Lindley's… Read More

Leeuwarden: A Ferwerda and G. Tresling, [1758]. First Edition. Hardcover. Two ink stamps to front endpaper and one to title page, a few faint marginal stains; light wear to binding. Near Fine. Folio (8-1/4" x 13") bound in contemporary half calf leather gilt, spine with raised bands with gilt borders and gilt decorations, red morocco spine label. With 3 printed title pages and illustrated with 39 folding engraved plates of apples, pears, plums, peaches, cherries, nuts, and grapes, all with fine contemporary hand-coloring, among the earliest books on the subject to be illustrated with color plates.

[1692 - 1779]. First Edition. Wraps. Wrappers with some soiling and slight loss. Contents Fine, bright and fresh. A string-tied manuscript (7-3/4" x 10-1/2") of Japanese Flower Arrangements (Kadou), author unknown, from the middle of the Edo era (1692-1779) consisting of 32 leaves with no text and a total of 63 lovely hand-colored drawings, one per page, of flower arrangements.

Rochester, NY: D. M. Dewey, [1865]. First Edition. Hardcover. Some peripheral soiling of several plates, many showing only minimal staining. Eleven plates show some smearing of the color, several suggesting that the smearing might have occurred before the original paint had dried. Circular brown stain measuring 1" on front cover. Very Good. Quarto (8-1/2" x 11") bound in publisher's gilt-decorated blue pebbled cloth, rebacked wiht the original black leather spine, previous owner's name in gilt on front cover with later name in gilt toward bottom; new endpapers. Illustrated with hand-colored title page, 97 full-page hand-colored plates of fruits and flowers, and one plate printed in green, all titled at the bottom and signed in the plate “D. W. Dewey's Series of Fruits, Flowers, and Ornamental Trees. Rochester, NY.” Most have a price in pencil at the bottom of the plate (how Dewey sold them individually). These nurserymen's plates were an American invention. Rochester, NY, was the center of… Read More

Rochester, NY: James Vick Seedsman, 1890 & [1891]. First Edition. Hardcover. Slight fraying of outer edges of three plates in the second volume, which lacks its title page. Bright, clean copies inside and out. Fine. Two octavo (5-1/4" x 8-1/4") volumes bound in dark green publisher's blindstamped cloth. Illustrated with 22 bright chromolithographs of flowers. The 1891 volume ends with the October issue and contains the final chromolithograph of the series. The October 1891 issue announced that beginning with the next issue Vick's Magazine would be enlarged to three columns a page and its price reduced to fifty cents a year. Henceforth, it would be published by the Vick Publishing Company, with the seed business to be conducted by James Vick's Sons. The new magazine would not be as "pretentious" as CENTURY, HARPER'S or SCRIBNER'S, "but in proportion to the price will contain fully as much matter." Two hundred thousand copies of the first issue were printed. The new magazine contained more literature… Read More