Floral at Firsts | Join us at STAND C18

It’s all go here at Shapero as Firsts, the London rare book fair, fast approaches. Yet, amidst the storm of clattering trunks the fair’s theme of Books in Bloom (how fitting given the nicest Spring in my memory!) has offered me a chance to reflect on something more peaceful — floral highlights from our collection:

Christoph Jakob TREW. Plantae Selectae. Augsburg, 1750–1773 [107704]

To begin, what could be more fitting than one of the greatest of the eighteenth-century botanical books? Trew’s Plantae Selectae puts together 100 finely hand-coloured engraved plates after the German botanical artist Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708–1770), which cover a host of exotic flowers and fruits from the pineapple to the March lily. Ehret eventually settled in Chelsea, where many of his designs made their way onto the borough’s eponymous porcelain. Today his original watercolours may be found in the Natural History Museum, at Kew, and in the Lindley Library amongst others. A lovely crisp example of this major work, bound in contemporary mottled calf.

Basilius BESLER. Hortus Eystettensis. Eichstätt & Nuremberg, 1613 [114438]

Moving back in time, to over a century earlier, we are very lucky to be able to offer a rare complete example of Baslius Besler’s mammoth florilegium, the Hortus Eystettensis. One of the greatest flower books ever produced, illustrated with 366 large, engraved plates (each measuring about 56 x 42 cm), it offers a unique record of the plants which could be found in a German garden at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Only 300 copies were produced, of which fewer survive intact, as many were broken up in the past.

[CHINESE SCHOOL]. Album of watercolours of flowers, fruit and silkworms. Circa 1800 [108333]

Our sumptuous three-volume album of Chinese watercolours made for the export market at the beginning of the nineteenth century has a very different feel. This copy is especially interesting since its binding bears the arms of the George Spencer-Churchill, 5th Duke of Marlborough (exhibiting the coronet for his curtesy title of Marquess of Blandford).

Lord George Gordon BYRON, 6th Baron. Poetry of Byron. London, 1905 [116472]

Dante Gabriel ROSSETTI. The Poems. London, 1907 [116529]

Which reminds me, that flowers have made their way into our collection in other, less obvious ways, for instance, in the decorative covers of Lord Byron’s poems, here in an elaborate Art Nouveau style of green morocco onlaid in white. We also currently have a simple yet elegant Arts & Craft binding of Rosetti’s verse with rose corner-pieces. Finally, leaving the best till last, we have the complex geometrical cross patté design from the workshop of the eighteenth-century master binder Thomas Sedgley.

[SEDGLEY BINDING]. The Holy Bible. Oxford, 1701 [111880]

So as we pack and get ready for Firsts London, we will be thinking about our ‘books in bloom’.

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