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FIRST U.S. COLOR PLATE BOOK
JACOB BIGELOW'S AMERICAN MEDICAL BOTANY, 1817-1821, AN EXAMINATION OF THE ORIGIN, PRINTING, BINDING AND DISTRIBUTION OF AMERICA'S FIRST COLOR PLATE BOOK. WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON THE MANNER OF MAKING AND PRINTING ITS COLORED PLATES.
Wolfe, Richard J.
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Limited to 300 numbered copies, this work (Taylor A21) is an excellent, scholarly study, finely printed by Henry Morris. With two original plates intended for Bigelow's book, Jacob Bigelow's American Medical Botany shows a plate that Bigelow had meant to use in his work but didn't. "The two illustrations mounted into this study comprise original, engraved plates--one hand-colored and one left uncolored--which Jacob Bigelow had made up when he initially intended to illustrate his edition in the usual, hand-colored way. As this study shows, the burdensome aspects of this method led him and his cohorts to invent a mechanical method of printing the plates and coloring them concurrently. This resulted in the abandonment of these initial plates, some of which had been colored by artists and some left untouched. These surplus plates, amounting to several thousand, came into the Boston Medical Library in 1927 through the bequest of Jacob Bigelow's grandson, Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow, and it was deemed desirable to mount two of them--a colored and an uncolored specimen--into each copy of this edition, in this way enhancing it with an air of originality and added interest."
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More On This Subject - -
> PRIVATE PRESS & FINE PRINTING, TWENTIETH CENTURY
> UNITED STATES, PENNSYLVANIA
> BIRD & BULL PRESS
> PRINTING HISTORY, NINETEENTH CENTURY
> COLOR PRINTING, NINETEENTH CENTURY
> BOTANY
> BIGELOW, JACOB
Books of related interests - -
> Harris, Elizabeth M., THE ART OF MEDAL ENGRAVING.
> Harris, Elizabeth M., THE ART OF MEDAL ENGRAVING.
> Morris, Henry, THE PRIVATE PRESS-MAN'S TALE.
> WESLEY W. BATES' COMPLETE WOOD ENGRAVINGS FOR THE FORESTERS.
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THE TWO FORGERS, A BIOGRAPHY OF HARRY BUXTON FORMAN & THO...
by Collins, John
First edition, one of 57 special numbered and signed copies (50 for sale) bound thus and containing additional material and available exclusively from Oak Knoll and Maggs. In an introductory note John Collins describes the additional material in this special edition as follows: (1)The life of Alfred Forman by his brother, written in 1926 but hitherto unpublished. In 1973 (Quartich Catalogue 926) Graham Pollard christened Alfred Forman the `third conspirator'. This was on the basis of his initials on the proofs of two chimerical wrappers for Morris pamphlets. Later that year, staying at Waddesdon with Graham, I upbraided him and suggested that initials on two proofs of a wrapper were an uncommonly slender thread on which to convict. Graham agreed and I think we must remove Alfred from his position as third man. (2)Alfred's previously printed sonnet AT BROWNING'S GRAVE 1899. This is without imprint: who printed it? There was a copy in the Forman sale (Sotheby's 10 April 1972, lot 200: £35) described as printed on John Dickinson paper while the B.M. copy was cited as one of five on Whatman. Our copies have only the watermark and seem therefore to be a third variant. Sold with the 1972 lot was a letter from Alfred to his nephew Maurice stating of the leaflet, `It is very scarce indeed and I have only 2 copies that I know of...'. The present bundle comprised 66 copies, and each one is meticulously costed in pencil by Maggs. (3)A colophon claiming a limitation of 50 copies, perhaps from the Browning bibliography of 1897. The fact that 64 copies were in the bundle may be thought to throw some doubt on the limitation.
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