BIRD & BULL PRESS: MCCLURE, Floyd Alonzo.

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Chinese Handmade Paper. First edition, number 126 of 325 copies only. This is a tribute to the American botanist and bamboo expert Floyd McClure (1897-1970), made up of his unpublished master's thesis and 41 samples of paper from his collection. The samples hail from across China and include those used for calligraphy, charms, and even lottery tickets.Paper has been produced in China for over 2,000 years. The samples in this volume were mostly gathered in Guangdong and include those made from mulberry, edgeworthia, and bamboo. They are of varying sizes, rarities, and purposes, with some like "Kam Pok Chi", used as a substrate for gold-leaf production, only produced in a single mill.Floyd McClure became an instructor in horticulture at Canton Christian College in Guangzhou in 1919 and spent the following 24 years in the country. He started to build a large specimen collection, mostly of bamboo, which led him to the art of papermaking. He chose this as the topic of his master's thesis in 1928, intending to publish a book on the topic, but died before he could complete the project. His thesis manuscript and his paper collection were then discovered by the scholar Elaine Koretsky, who convinced the Bird & Bull Press to fulfil McClure's vision.

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