Anne Kingsbury Wollstonecraft and Cuba Botanicals

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I found out about this author from a National Geographic Article: 'Lost' book of exquisite scientific drawings rediscovered after 190 years --- and the 3 volumes are available on Hathi Trust here. The author died young (46 years old) in 1828 and her work was not finished so it is in manuscript rather than published form. It had still been referenced a few times in the 1800s and those references are what started the search for it. Eventually, it was determined that the manuscript had been given to Cornell University in 1923 by a faculty member that was a descendant of the author. It had been in Cornell’s Rare and Manuscript Collection since! These volumes are well worth browsing. I’ve included sample images below…..but there are many more in the volumes to look at online.

eBotanical Prints - May 2019

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27 new books were added to the collection this month bringing the total of botanical print books I’ve found to over 1,600 - available free of charge on the Internet. The whole list can be accessed here. The list for May 2019 is below the sample images. I’ll be posting about several of the books in more detail in subsequent blog posts.

The flora sylvatica for southern India: containing quarto plates of all the principal timber trees in southern India and Ceylon V2 * Beddome, Richard Henry; Bentham, George * sample image * 1869

Specimens of the plants and fruits of the island of Cuba V1 * Wollstonecraft, Anne Kingsbury * sample image * 1826

Specimens of the plants and fruits of the island of Cuba V2 * Wollstonecraft, Anne Kingsbury * sample image * 1826

Specimens of the plants and fruits of the island of Cuba V3 * Wollstonecraft, Anne Kingsbury * sample image * 1826

Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae V 17 * Reichenbach, H.G. Ludwig * sample image * 1855

English Botany or Coloured figures of British plants V1 * Syme, John T. Boswell (editor); Lankester, Phebe; Sowerby, James de Carle and Salter, John Willam and Sowerby, John Edward (illustrators) * sample image * 1863

English Botany or Coloured figures of British plants V2 * Syme, John T. Boswell (editor); Lankester, Phebe; Sowerby, James de Carle and Salter, John Willam and Sowerby, John Edward (illustrators) * sample image * 1864

English Botany or Coloured figures of British plants V3 * Syme, John T. Boswell (editor); Lankester, Phebe; Sowerby, James de Carle and Salter, John Willam and Sowerby, John Edward (illustrators) * sample image * 1864

English Botany or Coloured figures of British plants V4 * Syme, John T. Boswell (editor); Lankester, Phebe; Sowerby, James de Carle and Salter, John Willam and Sowerby, John Edward (illustrators) * sample image * 1865

English Botany or Coloured figures of British plants V5 * Syme, John T. Boswell (editor); Lankester, Phebe; Sowerby, James de Carle and Salter, John Willam and Sowerby, John Edward (illustrators) * sample image * 1866

English Botany or Coloured figures of British plants V6 * Syme, John T. Boswell (editor); Lankester, Phebe; Sowerby, James de Carle and Salter, John Willam and Sowerby, John Edward (illustrators) * sample image * 1866

English Botany or Coloured figures of British plants V7 * Syme, John T. Boswell (editor); Lankester, Phebe; Sowerby, James de Carle and Salter, John Willam and Sowerby, John Edward (illustrators) * sample image * 1867

English Botany or Coloured figures of British plants V8 * Syme, John T. Boswell (editor); Lankester, Phebe; Sowerby, James de Carle and Salter, John Willam and Sowerby, John Edward (illustrators) * sample image * 1868

English Botany or Coloured figures of British plants V9 * Syme, John T. Boswell (editor); Lankester, Phebe; Sowerby, James de Carle and Salter, John Willam and Sowerby, John Edward (illustrators) * sample image * 1869

English Botany or Coloured figures of British plants V10 * Syme, John T. Boswell (editor); Lankester, Phebe; Sowerby, James de Carle and Salter, John Willam and Sowerby, John Edward (illustrators) * sample image * 1873

English Botany or Coloured figures of British plants V11 * Syme, John T. Boswell (editor); Lankester, Phebe; Sowerby, James de Carle and Salter, John Willam and Sowerby, John Edward (illustrators) * sample image * 1872

English Botany or Coloured figures of British plants V12 * Syme, John T. Boswell (editor); Lankester, Phebe; Sowerby, James de Carle and Salter, John Willam and Sowerby, John Edward (illustrators) * sample image * 1886

Orchidophile V1-2 * Gedefroy-Lebeuf, A.  * sample image * 1882

Orchidophile V3 * Gedefroy-Lebeuf, A.  * sample image * 1883

Orchidophile V4 * Gedefroy-Lebeuf, A.  * sample image * 1884

Orchidophile V5 * Gedefroy-Lebeuf, A.  * sample image * 1884

Lindenia - iconography of orchids vol 1 * Linden, Jean Jules * sample image * 1885

Lindenia - iconography of orchids vol 17 * Linden, Jean Jules; Linden, Lucien * sample image * 1901

The genera of the Eupatorieae (Asteraceae) * King, Merril; Robinson, Harold * sample image * 1987

Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas V1 no 2 2007 * Botanical Research Insitute of Texas * sample image * 2007

Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas V2 no 1 2008 * Botanical Research Insitute of Texas * sample image * 2008

Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas V1 no 1  2007 * Botanical Research Insitute of Texas * sample image * 2007

3 Free eBooks – May 2019

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There are so many books to browse through – or read – online. I am always fascinated with the perspective of history from books of a time period. It’s the closest we come to talking to the people that lived the events before our time.

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Newell, Peter. The Rocket Book. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1912. Available from the Library of Congress: intro to the collection here and the book in slideshow mode here. The upward course of a rocket from the basement up 20 floors of apartments! Yes – it’s dated (keep in mind the copyright date) but it is fascinating to notice what the author thought people would be doing in their apartments…and that he was thinking about rockets!

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Menpes, Mortimer (with text by Dorothy Menpes). World’s Children. London: A & C Black. 1903. Available from Hathi Trust here. Menpes was an Australian born British painter, author, printmaker and illustrator. He was a developer of techniques to produce colored art works in book form. His daughter, Dorothy, wrote the text for some of those books. The sleeping baby was one of my favorites from this book.

Sunset (magazine). San Francisco: Southern Pacific Company. Issues from May 1898 – 1923 from Hathi Trust here. I pointed to this magazine last month as well. I am still working my way through the magazines up to 1923. The one to look at this month is V31 from 1913. There are lots of colorful pictures – like this one of Mt. Hood in Oregon. Soon the years of World War I would cause the magazine to be produced with only the cover and a few ads in color.

eBotanical Prints – April 2019

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April was a slim month for botanical print books. I was thrilled to find two volumes of Curtis’s Botanical Magazine that I had not found before; the magazine began in 1787 and has continued through to the present with some name changes periodically but reverting back to the original name and is widely cited. Hopefully more volumes will be made available as the copyright on them expires; the most recent I’ve found online is from 1920. Find the list of all 1,628 volumes of botanical prints I’ve found online here.

Handbook to the ferns of British India, Ceylon and the Malay peninsula * Beddome, Richard Henry * sample image * 1892

Curtis' Botanical Magazine Vol 7-8 * Curtis, William * sample image * 1794

Curtis' Botanical Magazine Vol 25-26 * Curtis, William * sample image * 1807

The flora sylvatica for southern India: containing quarto plates of all the principal timber trees in southern India and Ceylon V1 * Beddome, Richard Henry; Bentham, George * sample image * 1869

 

I have already passed the 4 volume mark for May – more botanical prints into the collection by the end of the month!

3 Free eBooks – April 2019

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All three picks for this month are groups of items rather than just one – two magazines and the last one a series of volumes from the late 1700s of plants and animals. So many freely available books…so little time!

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Shadowland (magazine). New York City: M. P. Publishing Company from 1919 – 1923. Most issues available from Internet Archive here. Shadowland was an American monthly magazine about art, dance, and film. I particularly enjoyed the covers by A. M. Hopfmuller. The sample image I choose to include with this post was one that reminded me of a Zentangle pattern….a very stylized ‘tree.’

Sunset (magazine). San Francisco: Southern Pacific Company. Issues from May 1898 – 1923 from Hathi Trust here. The magazine has morphed many times and continued to be published after these fully available online issues (expired copyright); check the Wikipedia info here for the history. I have perused the issues to 1904 so far. I was intrigued by the picture of oil production in Los Angeles from the year one of my grandfathers was born.

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Shaw, George. The naturalists' miscellany : or Coloured figures of natural objects. London: Nodder & Co. 1789. 24 volumes available from Internet Archive here. The sample image I am including for these books is a cecropia moth; I’ll be starting my volunteering at the Wings of Fancy exhibit at Brookside Gardens soon and hope we have cecropia caterpillars again this year!

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100 Desert Wildflowers in Natural Color

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Dodge, Natt N. 100 Desert Wildflowers in Natural Color. Southwest Monuments Association. 1963. Available from the Project Gutenberg here.

Natt Noyes Dodge (1900-1982) was the regional naturalist for the Southwest Region of the National Park Service from 1935 to 1963. He was also an author and photographer – both of which are shown in this book along with his knowledge of the region. The version available from Project Gutenberg is from the third printing in 1967 which was a revision from the original in 1963.

I’m glad that the copyright holder has allowed this book to be available online....easy to enjoy the photos of desert wildflowers.

I had bought several of Dodge’s books is national parks when traveling to New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado from our home in Dallas in the 1970s, but I didn’t have this one.

Texas Wildflowers in Natural Colors

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Whitehouse, Eula. Texas Wildflowers in Natural Colors. 1936. Available from Project Gutenberg here.

This was my favorite botanical book for March….and maybe beyond that too. Eula Whitehouse lived from 1892-1974 and spent the latter part of her career in Dallas – working at Southern Methodist University from 1946 until her retirement; her books and collections are the core of what became BRIT (Botanical Research Institute of Texas). She assisted in organizing the Dallas County Audubon Society in 1954.

The book was self-published first in 1936 and remains a favorite among many Texas botanists. It was published privately and distributed through the Texas Book Store in Austin and then, in 1948, through Cokesbury Bookstore in Dallas. The version available online at Project Gutenberg shows both dates. I’ve included a few sample images below.

I grew up in Texas and found myself wondering why the nature day camps I attended during my elementary and middle school summers didn’t use her book as a reference as we tried to learn about the wildflowers we saw around us.

Eula Whitehouse published a study on the evolution, or succession, of plant communities at Enchanted Rock (in Texas) as part of her doctoral research at the University of Texas in the 1930s. In the late 1970s, Lady Bird Johnson urged The Nature Conservancy to purchase Enchanted Rock to be set aside for posterity. I like that there is a linkage via Enchanted Rock between Eula Whitehouse and Lady Bird Johnson – two women that were deeply involved in preserving wildflowers of Texas.

For more information about Eula Whitehouse, see pages at BRIT and Texas State Historical Association.

3 Free eBooks – March 2019

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In some months it’s hard to pick just three books to feature for the monthly eBooks post. March 2019 was one of those. I cheated a little and picked a periodical…with lots of issues available online…for the first one.

Baer, Casimir Hermann. Moderne Bauformen. Stuttgart: J. Hoffman. 1902-1923. Hathi Trust has volumes for each year here. A German periodical about architecture and interior design with many illustrations – some in color. It’s a slice of history of the period. Many of the interiors look modern…others dated. I realized again how appealing I find glass bricks, window seats, alcoves with benches and sometimes a table or a wall of windows and comfy chairs for reading, and curtains to divide a large room into segments. There were quite a few ideas I’ll use in Zentangle tiles as well.

Trouvelot, Etienne Leopold. The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings. 1882. A slide show of 15 drawings is available from Internet Archive here. Trouvelot was well-known for his astronomical drawings made from observations at the Harvard College Observatory and the US Naval Observatory. Unfortunately, he also is the person that introduced the European Gypsy Moth into North America.

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Day, Lewis Foreman. Nature in Ornament. New York: Charles Scribner’s sons. 1892. Available from Internet Archive here. Lots of ideas for Zentangle patterns in this book. I particularly liked the different stylized peacock feathers.

Hooker’s Icones plantarum

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Icones plantarum (illustrations of plants - figures, with brief descriptive characters and remarks, of new or rare plants, selected from the Kew herbarium) was started by Sir William Jackson Hooker in 1837 and edited the first 10 volumes and continued by his son Joseph Dalton Hooker (9 volumes) and then others. Over 25 volumes are available on Internet Archive or Botanicus (same scan…simple different user interface so take your pick).

The Hookers (father and then son) were directors of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 1841-1865 - the time period that the gardens became world renowned. They published throughout their long lives (the father lived to be 80 and the son 94) on botanical subjects. One of Joseph Dalton Hooker’s daughters (Harriet Anne Hooker) was a botanical illustrator and married William Turner Thiselton-Dyer who was director of the gardens from 1885-1905.

eBotanical Prints – February 2019

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Twenty-six botanical print books February; that’s what a lot in a month that only had 28 days! Most of the books were from one series and not in color but the drawings were detailed and often contained a lot of botanical details (flower parts, etc). Enjoy the carousel of the 26 sample images today and all the links to the volumes below! I’ll provide more information on some selections in the next couple of days. The complete list of all the botanical books I’ve found online, can be found here.

Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa V6 pt2 * Hegi, Gustav * sample image * 1907

Plantæ Yucatanæ. (Regionis Antillanæ) Plants of the insular, coastal and plain regions of the peninsula of Yucatan, Mexico * Millspaugh, Charles Frederick * sample image * 1902

Icones Plantarum V1 * Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1832

Icones Plantarum V2 * Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1832

Icones Plantarum V3 * Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1840

Icones Plantarum V4 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1841

Icones Plantarum V5 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1842

Icones Plantarum V7-8 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1844

Icones Plantarum V9 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1852

Icones Plantarum V10 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1854

Icones Plantarum V11 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1871

Icones Plantarum V12 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1876

Icones Plantarum V13 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1879

Icones Plantarum V14 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1882

Icones Plantarum V15 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1885

Icones Plantarum V16 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1887

Icones Plantarum V17 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1887

Icones Plantarum V18 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1887

Icones Plantarum V19 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1889

Icones Plantarum V20 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1899

Icones Plantarum V21 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1899

Icones Plantarum V22 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1894

Icones Plantarum V23 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1894

Icones Plantarum V24 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1895

Icones Plantarum V25 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1896

Icones Plantarum V26 * Hooker, Joseph Dalton; Hooker, William Jackson * sample image * 1899

3 Free eBooks – February 2019

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As usual – I tried to select some different kinds of books that are available for free to peruse online. This month they are from three different sources too: Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Project Gutenberg. Maybe one of these is something you would enjoy too…so take your pick - history or art or children’s literature!

Country Life in America. New York: Doubleday, Page, & Co. 1901-1917. Hathi Trust has 31 volumes of the periodical available here. Most of the magazine is black and white but there is some color like these three pictures from the December 1904 issue. The advertising is as interesting as the pictures with articles…it is a snapshot of the time: technology, food, special occasions, travel.

Rebay, HIlla. Third enlarged catalogue of the Solomon R. Guggeneheim collection of non-objective paintings: March 7th until April 17th, 1938, Gibbes memorial art gallery, Charleston, South Carolina. New York: Bradford Press. 1938. Available from Internet Archive here. Lots of colored images in this book since it was from an exhibition of ‘modern’ art of the 1920s and 1930s. The two below are by Rudolf Bauer.

Greenaway, Kate. Mother Goose or the Old Nursery Rhymes. London: Frederick Warne and Co. 1881. Available from Project Gutenberg here. Familiar Rhymes…fun illustrations. This author created imaginary 18th-century clothes for children that became a style for actual clothes for children!

Botanical Prints to ‘Color’

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In January one of the botanical print books, turned out to be suitable as a coloring book. It was volume 3 of A Flora of North America by William P.C. Barton published in 1828 and available from the Internet Archive here. Below are my 4 favorites from the book. The title page of the book says that it has ‘coloured pictures drawn from nature’ so I suspect that some editions of the book was not like this one that was scanned. I like that this one lends itself to printing and coloring to create your own version of a botanical print.

According to Wikipedia, the author was born to an influential family in Philadelphia (father a lawyer, uncle a medical botanist). He became a doctor and had a Navy career as a surgeon then as commanding officer for hospitals. In 1815 upon his uncle’s death, he became professor of botany at the University of Pennsylvania…teaching medical botany.

eBotanical Prints – January 2019

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Twenty-three more books found last month and added to the collection. The new ones are listed below the sample images and the complete list can be found here. The January books were found on both Internet Archive and Hathi Trust sites…all freely available to peruse online. I’ve picked a couple to highlight in subsequent blog posts.

A flora of North America : illustrated by coloured figures, drawn from nature (volume 2) * Barton, William Paul Crillon * sample image * 1821

A flora of North America : illustrated by coloured figures, drawn from nature (volume 3) * Barton, William Paul Crillon * sample image * 1821

Vegetable materia medica of the United States * Barton, William Paul Crillon; Boyd, John; Waenicke, John G. * sample image * 1818

Herbier général de l'amateur, contenant la description, l'histoire, les propriétés et la culture des végétaux utiles et agréables 1816 (1) * Loiseleur-Deslongchamps, M. * sample image * 1816

Herbier général de l'amateur, contenant la description, l'histoire, les propriétés et la culture des végétaux utiles et agréables 1817 (2) * Loiseleur-Deslongchamps, M. * sample image * 1817

Herbier général de l'amateur, contenant la description, l'histoire, les propriétés et la culture des végétaux utiles et agréables 1819 (3) * Loiseleur-Deslongchamps, M. * sample image * 1819

Herbier général de l'amateur, contenant la description, l'histoire, les propriétés et la culture des végétaux utiles et agréables 1820 (4) * Loiseleur-Deslongchamps, M. * sample image * 1820

Herbier général de l'amateur, contenant la description, l'histoire, les propriétés et la culture des végétaux utiles et agréables 1821 (5) * Loiseleur-Deslongchamps, M. * sample image * 1821

Herbier général de l'amateur, contenant la description, l'histoire, les propriétés et la culture des végétaux utiles et agréables 1822 (6) * Loiseleur-Deslongchamps, M. * sample image * 1822

Herbier général de l'amateur, contenant la description, l'histoire, les propriétés et la culture des végétaux utiles et agréables 1824 (7) * Loiseleur-Deslongchamps, M. * sample image * 1824

Herbier général de l'amateur, contenant la description, l'histoire, les propriétés et la culture des végétaux utiles et agréables 1827 (8) * Loiseleur-Deslongchamps, M. * sample image * 1827

Voyage autour du monde execute pendant les annees 1836 et 1837 sur la corvette la Bonite - Atlas * Alleizette, Charles d' et al * sample image * 1840

Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa V1 * Hegi, Gustav * sample image * 1907

Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa V2 * Hegi, Gustav * sample image * 1907

Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa V3 * Hegi, Gustav * sample image * 1907

Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa V4 pt1 * Hegi, Gustav * sample image * 1907

Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa V4 pt2 * Hegi, Gustav * sample image * 1907

Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa V4 pt3 * Hegi, Gustav * sample image * 1907

Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa V5 pt1 * Hegi, Gustav * sample image * 1907

Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa V5 pt2 * Hegi, Gustav * sample image * 1907

Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa V5 pt3 * Hegi, Gustav * sample image * 1907

Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa V5 pt4 * Hegi, Gustav * sample image * 1907

Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa V6 pt1 * Hegi, Gustav * sample image * 1907

Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel (ebooks)

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Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel was a Dutch botanist. He started out as a medical doctor in 1833 but transitioned to botany by 1846. For more information about his life see Wikipedia or http://www.repository.naturalis.nl/document/570502. He died relatively early and did most of his work on the flora of the Dutch East Indies through correspondence from the University of Amsterdam and then Utrecht University.

The Internet Archive has two of his books available and I’ve picked two images from each of them:

De Noord-Nederlandsche vergiftige gewassen published in 1836 (link to book on Internet Archive)

Choix de plantes rares ou nouvelles, cultivees et dessinees dans le jardin botanique de Buitenzorg published in 1868 (link to book on Internet Archive)

Botany for the Artist (ebook)

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Simblet, Sarah. Botany for the Artist. Great Britain: Dorling Kindersley Limited. 2010. Available from Internet Archive here.

It is packaged on the Internet Archive with Botany Illustrated – available via the same link. The author is an artist rather than a botanist but her passion for creating botanical art comes through in this book. It contains a lot of photographs, some botanical print history and how to draw plants. I’ll never be a botanical artist, but I appreciated this book.

Botanical prints are something I enjoy particularly in the winter when the outdoors here is not as colorful; many of the trees are bare and we are having a lot of cloudy days. Browsing through a book like this is an armchair version of walking through a conservatory or traveling to some other part of the globe where the air temperature is much warmer!

I picked four images to share here….so many beautiful ones to choose from …worth a browse through the whole book on a January day indoors.

eBotanical Prints – December 2018

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27 more books added to the big list (find it here) in December. The sample images for 27 new this month are included in the slideshow below.

The copyright dates range from 1760 to 2010….lots of changes in the world over that time period.

Botany Illustrated * Glimn-Lacy, Janice; Kaufman, Peter B. * sample image * 2006

Botany for the artist * Simblet, Sarah * sample image * 2010

The Florist * Sayer, Robert * sample image * 1760

Billeder af Nordens flora * Lindman, Carl Axel Magnus * sample image * 1901

Taschenflora des Alpens-Wanderers * Schroter, Carl * sample image * 1892

Flore coloriée portative du touriste dans les Alpes  * Schroter, Carl * sample image * 1904

Flora fossilis Arctica - V1 * Heer, Oswald; Cramer, Karl Eduard; Nordenskiold, Adolf Erik; Schroter, Carl * sample image * 1868

Flora fossilis Arctica - V2 * Heer, Oswald; Cramer, Karl Eduard; Nordenskiold, Adolf Erik; Schroter, Carl * sample image * 1871

Flora fossilis Arctica - V3 * Heer, Oswald; Cramer, Karl Eduard; Nordenskiold, Adolf Erik; Schroter, Carl * sample image * 1874

Flora fossilis Arctica - V4 * Heer, Oswald; Cramer, Karl Eduard; Nordenskiold, Adolf Erik; Schroter, Carl * sample image * 1877

Flora fossilis Arctica - V6 * Heer, Oswald; Cramer, Karl Eduard; Nordenskiold, Adolf Erik; Schroter, Carl * sample image * 1880

Botanical Illustration In The Nineteenth Century * Schmidt, Alesandra; Jocoby, Trudy B. * sample image * 1996

Grevillea * Cooke, Mordecai Cubitt; Massee, George * sample image * 1872

British Fungi * Massee, George * sample image * 1911

Portefeuille des horticulteurs V1 * Gerard, Frederic (editor) * sample image * 1847

Portefeuille des horticulteurs V2 * Gerard, Frederic (editor) * sample image * 1848

African Violet Magazine - 1983 *  * sample image * 1983

Choix de plantes rares ou nouvelles * Miquel, Friedrich Anton Wilhelm * sample image * 1863

De Noord-Nederlandsche vergiftige gewassen * Miquel, Friedrich Anton Wilhelm * sample image * 1836

William Coxe: manuscript (atlas) * Coxe, William * sample image * 1831

Emily Dickenson Herbarium Pages * sample image * 1846

Beatric Potter, mycologist * sample image * 1897

Elements of Botany * Duppa, Richard  * sample image * 1812

Orchids: their cultures and management * Watson, William; Chapman, H. J. (editor) * sample image * 1903

Cactus culture for amateurs: a concise and practical guide to the management of a little understood family of plants * Watson, William * sample image * 1920

A flora of North America: illustrated by coloured figures, drawn from nature (Volume 1) * Barton, William Paul Crillon * sample image * 1821

Description des plantes rares cultivees a Malmaison et a Navarre * Bonplan, Aime; Bessa Pancrace; Didot, Pierre; Redoute, Pierre Joseph * sample image * 1812


3 Free eBooks – December 2018

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I always am challenged to pick just three books from the eBooks I’ve found during the month. There is a lot of variety in my selections this month….from archeology to typewriter art to a story book. Enjoy!

Savill, Mervyn. Pre-Inca Art and Culture. London: Macgibbon & Kee. 1960. Available at Internet Archive here. There are many books that are from the Archaeology Survey of India that are now available on Internet Archive. This one is from 1960. Some of the art looks very exotic but these three busts of rulers look very human indeed.

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Riddell, Alan. Typewriter Art. London Magazine Editions. 1975. Available Internet Archive here. I can remember making banners on continuous feed printers in the 1970s! I don’t think I ever made anything as elaborate as this cityscape, but this book brought back the memory.

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Olfers, Sibylee von. The Story of the Root-Children. 1906. The English version was published by Floris Books, Edinburgh in 1990 and the 5th impression is available from Internet Archive here. The illustrations are interesting. Wikipedia has a short biography of the author. She was a German art teacher and nun that created her picture books for her younger sister in the early 1900s. I wish all of her books were available on Internet Archive…even if they were the German editions…since I am most interested in her illustrations.

Reichenbachs’ Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae

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A father and son - Ludwig and Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach – produced 24 volumes of the Icones florae Germanicae et Helveticae of which Internet Archive has 20 available here. The father is better known for his glass sea creatures and Henrich Gustav Reichenbach is better known for his work on orchids. Still – the illustrations in these volumes are colorful and more like traditional botanical prints in the 1800s – with the central plant in color and plant parts drawn in available space around that depiction.

The colors look a little faded….but that may have been the way they were originally. They still are enough to perk up a cold winter day.

Gustav Hegi’s Alpenflora

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Gustav Hegi was a Swiss botanist that worked in Germany for most of his career. He is best known for editing Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa from 1908 – 1931 (he died in 1932) writing approximately a third of the content during those years. I started with his earlier work – Alpenflora – which is available from the Internet Archive here. The first edition was published in 1905; the edition available on Internet Archive is from 1922.

The botanical illustrations are grouped on the pages. My favorite is probably the one for pines…but the groups of flowers are appealing too – not as bouquets but how the author made use of the whole page to maximize the plants he could document.

The colors on this scanned copy appear to be very good. It’s a good book to enjoy on a winter day.

3 Free eBooks – November 2018

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It is so easy to find books online these days. More institutions are scanning their older collections and Internet Archive is the access hub for accessing many of those scanned collections. Many books that would have been hard to find because they are out-of-print are now available in digital form.

Matz, Friedrich. Art of the World: Art of Crete and Early Greece, The prelude to Greek Art. New York: Crown Publishers. 1962. Available from Internet Archive here. A little dated (lots has been discovered and/or figured out since the 1960s), but the pictures are great. I loved the small stone jug. The text said it was probably stalactite. It was found in eastern Crete.

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We are traveling back from New Mexico today…having enjoyed our second foray to the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. Keeping with that theme – there are two books on my favorites list for this month that are related:

Johnsgard, Paul A. Sandhill and whooping cranes: ancient voices over America’s wetlands. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2011. Available for checkout from Internet Archive here.

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ERIC. Wildlife of New Mexico: A Coloring Book. 1986. Available from Internet Archive here. There are 31 animals pictured along with a map of their range when the book was published in the 1980s. The javelina must have expanded its range since it is now seen in the refuge which in south central New Mexico. But the highlight of the festival – always – is the sandhill cranes.