The Temple of Flora (Folio Society Limited Edition)

A$900 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books

Limited edition

THORNTON, Robert John (commentary by Stephen Harris). The Temple of Flora. London: The Folio Society, 2008. 2 vols. Elephant folio. Main volume hand bound by Smith Settle in quarter dark green goatskin and dark green canvas cloth. Spine lettered in gilt on black leather panel. Cover illustration in gilt and colour after the plate The Night-Blowing Cereus , reproduced by David Eccles. Upper edge stained dark green. Main volume: 9 preliminary monochrome plates, 5 preliminary colour plates, 29 full-colour floral plates, and 2 loose full-colour plates in envelope. Commentary volume by Stephen Harris bound in dark green buckram, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, 117 pp. Housed in green canvas cloth solander case. First Folio Society edition. Facsimile. Limitation: 1,980 copies printed in total, of which 600 were bound with the full text; this being number 23 of those 600. Robert John Thornton was a physician and botanist with an ambition that far exceeded his means. Between 1797 and 1807, he produced New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus , a work intended to be the most magnificent botanical publication ever made. Its third and most celebrated part was The Temple of Flora : a series of flower paintings in which the plants were presented not against the flat white grounds of conventional botanical illustration but within dramatic landscaped settings that gave each plate the character of a Romantic landscape painting as much as a work of natural history. He c

• Binding: Hardcover

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