Lot 330

Florilegium - Cook, Captain James










Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 4 May 2016 at 12:00 BST
Description
Captain Cook's Florilegium. A Selection of Engravings from the Drawings of Plants collected by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander on Captain Cook's first Voyage to the Islands of the Pacific, with Accounts of the Voyage by Wilfrid Blunt and of the Botanical Explorations and Prints by WIlliam T. Stearn. Lion and Unicorn Press, 1973. Large folio, number 23 of 100 copies, a Subscriber's copy [Subscriber no 23, Dr. J.A. Watt], 30 engraved plates, text printed in purple, green, red, blue, brown and black, text and plates printed on Crisbrooke handmade paper, binding of Nigerian goatskin and Japanese silk paper by Zaehnsdorf Limited and Edward Robbins, folding velvet lined black cloth box, a few tiny areas of weevil damage to silk, a few slight marks to box, otherwise very fine
Footnote
Note: An exceptionally beautifully designed and printed work. The thirty engraved plates were printed by hand from the actual copper plates prepared directly after Captain Cook's first voyage. The original sketches, made in Brazil, the Friendly Islands, Java, Australia, and New Zealand, were engraved under Sir Joseph Banks's supervision on the return of the expedition to England. The plates were never printed until this publication, which took thirteen years to complete.
Provenance: , number 23 of 100 copies, a Subscriber's copy [Subscriber no 23, Dr. J.A. Watt], bequeathed to the current owner.









