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Tag Archives: flowers

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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Book of the Week — Anatomy of Plants with an Idea of a Philosophical History of Plants and Several Other Lectures…

02 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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Carl Linnaeus, Charles II, Christopher Wren, flowers, fruits, leaves, London, Marcello Malpighi, microscope, microscopy, Nehemiah Grew, physiology, plant anatomy, plant morphology, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Royal Society, seeds, vegetables


“At a Meeting of the Council of the Royal Society, Fe. 22. 1681/2 Dr. Grew having read several Lectures of the Anatomy of Plants, some whereof have been already printed at divers times, and some are not printed; with several other Lectures of their Colours, Odours Tasts, and Salts, as also of the Solution of Salts in Water; and of Mixture; all of them to the satisfaction of the said Society; It is therefore Ordered, that He be desired, to casue the to printed [sic] together in one Volume.” — Chr. Wren P.R.S.

Anatomy of Plants: With an Idea of a Philosophical History of Plants and Several Other…
Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712)
London: Printed by W. Rawlins, for the author, 1682
First edition
QK41 G82

Rare Books was recently graced with a visit from a member of the Royal Society and two other guests, all three royalty in the world of science. This visit and the accompanying bright blue spring skies brought to mind flowers, vegetable gardens, herb gardens and this book. The great Sir Christopher Wren, founder and then-president of the Royal Society, “Ordered” Nehemiah Grew to publish the work presented here.

Nehemiah Grew was a physician, but made his reputation in the fields of plant morphology and anatomy. At the Royal Society, he met Robert Hooke, who was progressing in his studies in the field of microscopy. At the same time that Marcello Malpighi presented papers to the Society, Grew presented his The Anatomy of Vegetables Begun (1672). Both men reported on the cellular construction of the woody parts of plants, the beginning of a hypothesis of a cellular theory of plant life. Grew’s work led him to the announcement  that there were two sexes in plants.

This book is based on three earlier publications, “The Anatomy of Vegetables Begun (1672),” “An Idea of Phytological History Propounded (1673),” and “The Comparative Anatomy of Trunks (1675)”, together with a fourth unpublished book, “The Anatomy of Leaves, Flowers, Fruits, and Seeds,” dedicated to Robert Boyle, and six discourses that had been delivered before the Royal Society.

In Grew’s dedicatory epistle to King Charles II, he wrote, “Your Majesty will here see, That there are those things within a Plant, little less admirable, than within an Animal. That a Plant, as well as an Animal, is composed of several Organical Parts; some whereof may be called its Bowels. That every Plant hath Bowels of divers kinds, conteining divers kinds of Liguors. That even a Plant lives partly upon Aer; for the reception whereof, it hath those Parts which are answerable to Lungs. So that A Plant is, as it were, an Animal in Quires; as an Animal is a Plant, or rather several Plants bound up into Volume.”

Nehemiah Grew’s work turned the anatomy and physiology of plants into a new science. This is the first book in which Robert Hooke’s newly invented microscope is demonstrated for the examination plants.

Grew began his studies with naked-eye observations and then continued with observations seen at the higher magnifications made possible with Hooke’s microscope.

“…all the Observations conteined in the First Book, except one or two, were made with the Naked Eye. The the end, I might first give a proof, How far it was possible for us to go, without the help of Glasses: which many Ingenious Men want; and more, the patience to manage them. For the Truth of these Observations, Seignior Malpighi, having procured my Book to be translated into Latin for his private us, speaks his own sense, in some of his Letters to Mr. Oldenburge, printed at the end of his Anatomy of Plants…Having thus begun with the bare Eye; I next proceeded to the use of the Microscope. And the Observations thereby made, first on Roots, and afterwards on Trunks and Branches, together with the figures…”

Through these observations he was able to describe the structure of stems and roots by the combined use of transverse, radial, and tangential longitudinal sections.

“In the Plates, for the clearer conception of the Part described, I have represented it, generally, as entire, as its being magnified to some good degree, would bear…Yet have I not every where magnify’d the Part to the same degree; but more or less, as was necessary to represent what is spoken of it. And very highly, only in some few Examples, as in Tab. 40. which may suffice to illustrate the rest. Some of the Plates, especially those which I did not draw to the Engravers hand, are a little hard and stiff: but they are all well enough done, to represent what they intend.”

Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus dedicated a genus of trees to Grew in appreciation of his work. Few important advances on the ideas of Grew would be made for nearly another one hundred years.

Illustrated with eighty-three engraved plates, some double-page, showing microscopic sections of plant structures.

 

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Mrs. Delany & Her Circle

07 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Donations

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Alicia Weisberg-Roberts, Book and Paper Conservator, Brigham Young University, flowers, J. Willard Marriott Library, Kohleen Reeder Jones, London, Mark Laird, Mrs. Delaney, New Haven, rare books, Sir John Soane' Museum, Yale Center for British Art

MrsD&HerCircleCover

“I have invented a new way of imitating flowers.”
— Mrs. Delany

MRS. DELANY AND HER CIRCLE
Mark Laird and Alicia Weisberg-Roberts, eds.
New Haven: Yale Center for British Art; London: Sir John Soane’s Museum;… 2009
NX547.6 D45 M77 2009

Publication to accompany an exhibition organized by the Yale Center for British Art in association with Sir John Soane’s Museum, London: Yale Center for British Art, September 24, 2009 through January 3, 2010 and Sir John Soane’s Museum, February 18, 2010 through May 1, 2010.

We are especially fond of this book for two reasons:

First, our friend and colleague, Kohleen Reeder Jones, worked on this project and wrote the chapter, “The ‘Paper Mosaick’ Practice of Mrs. Delaney & Her Circle.” Kohleen worked at the J. Willard Marriott Library as the Book and Paper Conservator. She went from here to Brigham Young University and then home, where she takes care of her family as wonderfully as she took care of the work of Mrs. Delaney and of our rare books.

MrsD&HerCirclePg224

MrsD&HerCircleP232Spread

Second, the Rare Books copy is a gift of a most generous friend, who insists on anonymity.

Thank you, friends!

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