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Tag Archives: Alaska

Stop and Smell the (Arctic) Flowers

30 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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19th century, Abraham Small, Alaska, American, animals, Arctic, Atlantic Ocean, bookplate, botany, British Royal Navy, Brooklyn, Canadian Arctic Archipelago, climate, Department of Botany, drawings, Elisha Kent Kane, Emily Dickinson, Europe, explorers, Exquimaux, fauna, flora, Fury, George Frances Lyon, Greenland, Gripper, Hecla, Henry Parkyns Hoppner, ice, icebergs, illustrations, Inuit, James Christie, James Clark Ross, James Walsh, John Ross, Keeper of the Herbaria, lichen, London, Lyuba Basin, moss, New York, Nicholas Polunin, North America, Northwest Passage, Norwegian, Oxford, Philadelphia, Roald Amundsen, scurvy, ships, Sir John Franklin, William Edward Parry, William Parry

As if some little Arctic flower
Upon the polar hem –
Went wandering down the Latitudes
Until it puzzled came
To continents of summer –
To firmaments of sun –
To strange, bright crowds of flowers –
And birds, of foreign tongue!
– Emily Dickinson

The Northwest Passage was the name given to the sea route which connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific along the northern coast of North America via the waterways in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Toward the end of the 15th century and into the 20th century, colonial powers from Europe sent their best explorers on countless attempts to discover a commercial route, with many failing and turning back and others ending in disaster. The first successful journey was made in 1906 by a Norwegian explorer named Roald Amundsen, completing the passage from Greenland to Alaska.

Prior to Amundsen, notable captains such as John Ross, Elisha Kent Kane, James Clark Ross and William Parry explored separate parts of the Northwest Passage in the first half of the 19th century.  Parry’s first voyage was, without a doubt, the most successful in the search for the passage and his second and third attempts continued to uncover new information about the mysterious archipelago, including research on climate, flora and fauna. In fact, the notes taken by Parry and his shipmates and recorded in three separate journals contributed to crucial research in botany, among other natural sciences.


Journal of a Voyage of the Discovery of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific
William Edward Parry
Philadelphia: Abraham Small, 1821
First American Edition
G635 P3 A3 1821


Between 1821-1825 three ships from the British Royal Navy, the Fury, Hecla, and the Gripper, took three separate journeys into the Arctic under the leadership of Captain Parry and Captains John Ross and George Frances Lyon. While their expeditions proved to be successful, they were not without tragedy as scurvy became common and ships were often stuck in ice for weeks on end. Narratives of the journeys were published in London and Philadelphia, respectively, with detailed accounts of the days on board as well as their interactions with the Inuit, described as Esquimaux in the journals.


Journal of a Third Voyage of the Discovery of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific
William Edward Parry
Philadelphia: H.C. Carey I. Lea, 1826
First American Edition
G650 1824 P31


A Brief Narrative of an Unsuccessful Attempt to Reach Repulse Bay
G.F. Lyon
London: J. Murray, 1825
First Edition
G 650 1824 L9 1825


In addition, the journals included spectacular illustrations of the ships amid the looming icebergs and intricate appendices which accounted for the varieties of animals and plants that they encountered along the way. Among one of the shipmates that helped with the drawings and collecting data was Henry Parkyns Hoppner, listed as ‘lieutenant’ on the Griper in the first journal’s roster. Hoppner accompanied Parry on all three expeditions, first as a lieutenant on the Griper and Hecla, and later promoted to second in command on the Fury in the last voyage. Although Hoppner never received the kind of international acclaim as his Captains, his creative and artistic role on board as illustrator and actor proved to leave an impression.

Collection of Plants Found in the Arctic Regions…
Henry Parkyns Hoppner (1795 – 1833)
Publisher not identified, 1821
QK 474 H66

Impressions are also what we find in this small and unassuming book. From each of the pressed flowers, a ghostly accompaniment is imprinted on the opposite page, hinting at traces of life as much from the colorful flowers as from the hands of the shipmate who collected them. Impressions are also present as the handwritten notes inked on the beginning and end pages of the book. With no bibliographic information, we can only look to a small note which describes the book as “a collection of plants found in the Arctic Sections … made by Captain Hopner … 2nd in command of H.M.S. “Fury” … The “Fury” and “Hecla” (Captain Lyon) sailed to discover the N.W. passage May 1821.” Following the description, the book is addressed to Hoppner’s friend James Christie.

Attached to a page, there is also a miniature envelope that holds “moss which Franklin and his party had as their only food.” It is possible that this note alludes to the failed overland expeditions in the Arctic lead by Sir John Franklin between 1819-1822. During this time, Franklin lost more than half of the men in his party to starvation and, in order to survive, the remainder of his crew ate lichen, with some attempting to eat their own leather boots. Furthermore, there were rumors of cannibalism and at least one murder reported.

In addition to the handwritten notes, a bookplate on the first page suggests that sometime during the mid-20th century the book was held in the Department of Botany in Oxford while Nicholas Polunin was the Keeper of the Herbaria, which is now almost four hundred years old. While lecturing at Oxford, Polunin traveled to the Canadian Arctic as a botanist on an expedition that discovered the last major islands to be added to the world’s map.

Polunin was well recognized for his research and publications, specifically Circumpolar Artic Flora which was published in 1959. This book helped inspire James Walsh’ modern herbaria, The Arctic Plants of New York City, which “combines personal letters, poetry, prose essay, scholarly research, botanical exploration and artistic investigation,” of plants gather in Brooklyn, New York. The bibliography includes a reproduction of the index from Polunin’s work, in which the author has marked in red pen the eighty-eight Arctic plants that occur in New York City.

The Arctic Plants of New York City
James Walsh
New York: Granary Books, 2015
QK177 W35 2015

From the publisher’s website: “The Arctic Plants of New York City […] ranges from the Doctrine of Signatures to the sleep of plants, and from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Muir on mental travel to Giacomo Leopardi and Charles Baudelaire on the necessity of illusion for art and life. Interspersed throughout the book are a number of two-page spreads that focus on a single plant, such as Common Mugwort, with a mounted botanical specimen of that plant surrounded by texts drawn from earlier writers on botany and set in verse, creating a field of word-objects interacting with plant-objects. The letters that open the book lead into a prose essay that touches on the souls of plants, their use in medicine and as spurs to mental travel, their transience, their migrations, their meaning.” Written, designed, and letterpress printed by James Walsh, with eighteen botanical specimens pressed and mounted by the author. Bound by Daniel Kelm at Wide Awake Garage. Edition of forty copies, 34 of which are for sale.

~Contributed by Lyuba Basin, Rare Books

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Stop and Smell the Flowers

24 Thursday May 2018

Posted by scott beadles in Uncategorized

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Alaska, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Asia, Australia, Bill Edwardes, botany, climate, commerce, découpage, E. C. Alexander, endangered, English, Europe, flora, flower specimens, flowers, France, French, German, Germany, Hebrew, herbaria, Holy Land, International Pressed Flower Art Society, J. Willard Marriott Library, Japan, Jerusalem, Joyce Fenton, Lyuba Basin, May, Mexico, Middle East, nomenclature, olive wood, Oshibana, plant species, poppies, Pressed Flower Craft Guild, pressed flowers, repository, Russian, Ruth Miller Staats, Samurai, San Francisco, seeds, Silk Road, sunflowers, taxonomies, The Popular Bookstore, The University of Utah, tourism, United Kingdom, United States, Valdez, Valdez Museum Historical Archive, vegetation, Worldwide Pressed Flower Guide

“But I must gather knots of flowers and buds, and garlands gay;
For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.”
–  Alfred Lord Tennyson, “The May Queen”

When was the last time you stopped to smell the flowers? I did it just two days ago, when the purple and white lilac bushes in front of my house produced such an aroma after the rain that I had to stop in my tracks to take it in. Some days I’ll pick the poppies and sunflowers that grow wild in the backyard and set them in a vase on the kitchen table, and if I’m feeling particularly extra, I will even go out and buy an arrangement to add some oomph to the room.

Although my allergies have been getting worse and worse every year, my enthusiasm for flora has yet to subside. I’ve been enjoying the slower campus days at The University of Utah, when I can wander around outside the library and take in all of the new blooms. I am always impressed with the assortment of flowers lining the pathways, some of which I recognize as native to the state, while others look unfamiliar, yet still alluring.


 

Natural Flowers of the Holy Land
Jerusalem, 1900s
QK 378 N37 1900z


We might find flowers attractive for a number of reasons ranging from color, shape, texture or smell, but did you know the craft of pressing flowers is actually an ancient art that dates back to 16thcentury? It is said that Samurai warriors in Japan once practiced this art, called Oshibana, as part of their discipline to promote patience and harmony with nature, as well as to enhance their powers of concentration.

The art of drawing with petals gradually spread from Asia to the Middle East along growing trade networks of the Silk Road. One outcome of this global commerce and tourism were elaborate souvenir books, popular in the late 19th century, Jerusalem. Different renditions of Flowers of the Holy Land combined photographs of holy sites in and around Jerusalem with pressed flowers gathered from those sites. These flowers were artistically formatted, bound between olive wood covers, and included translations from Hebrew into French, German, English and Russian, as they were sold to visitors coming from different parts of the world.


 

 

Flowers of the Holy Land
Jerusalem, 1900s
QK89 F56


Around the same time, botanists in Europe began systematically collecting and preserving flower specimens from all over the world. No longer a simple art form, the pressed plant books allowed scientists to study the flora of other countries and understand the variety of plant taxonomies, geographic distributions, and to develop an efficient and stable nomenclature. Furthermore, the books are able to preserve a record of change in vegetation over time for future scientists who are tracking changes in climate and human impact. Some books can even be viable repositories, holding seeds of extinct or endangered plant species. These specimen books, or herbaria, are not just pretty to look at for they contain crucial knowledge on every page.


 

A Collection of Wild Flower of California
E.C. Alexander
San Francisco: The Popular Bookstore, 1895
QK 89 A375


Anyone can gather flowers and create their own pressed flower book. Like Ruth Miller Staats, a resident of Valdez, Alaska who sold cards, artwork and booklets of pressed flowers to tourists during the 1930s and 1940s. Although Ruth had been paralyzed from the waist down following an airplane crash (she had sustained a double compound fracture of both legs, fracture of the pelvis, and a fractured lumbar vertebrae), her friends and neighbors gathered flowers for her to compile the pieces. Many of her items can now be found in the Valdez Museum Historical Archive.

Wild Flowers of Alaska
Ruth M. Staats
Valdez, Alaska, 1930s
QK 89 S73


The craft of pressing flowers can also extend beyond books. Petals and leaves can be applied to trays and other wood furnishings using the technique of découpage. Those who have a deep interest in the art can join the Pressed Flower Craft Guild, founded by Joyce Fenton and Bill Edwardes in 1983. Other organizations include the International Pressed Flower Art Society and the Worldwide Pressed Flower Guild, with members coming from countries such as Japan, Mexico, France, Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom and United States.

So come by and smell the flowers and allow yourself to appreciate the little things in life. Reflect on what is beautiful, fragile and simple, such as this small collection of books.

~Contributed by Lyuba Basin, Rare Books

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