Icones Farlowianae - One of Only 500 Copies
Exquisitely Illustrated with Very Fine Colour Plates
One of the Most Important Works on American Mushrooms
Farlow, William Gilson. ICONES FARLOWIANAE. Illustrations of the Larger Fungi of Eastern North America. With Descriptive Text by Edward Angus Burt. (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1929) First Edition. One of 500 copies only. Exquisitely illustrated with 103 very fine coloured plates after watercolours of Joseph Bridgham and printed by the Boston Heliotype Printing Company. All plates are full page and one is multi-folding. Folio (14.3" x 11.8"), publisher's original green buckram, the spine and upper cover lettered in gilt. 120pp. plus plates, text printed by Updike at the Merrymount Press. A handsome and pleasing copy in good order, well preserved, bright and clean with only very minimal or occasional offsetting.
ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS ON NORTH AMERICAN MUSHROOMS AND FUNGI. A number of rare mushrooms are included in the text and pictorial descriptions.
The creation of ICONES FARLOWIANAE was a long and complex journey. It involved no less than four botanists, two professional artists, two commercial printers, one warehouse, and numerous photographers and editors. The work spanned more than forty years and cost an estimated $50,000 at a time when a lavish new house cost less than $9,000.
Following Farlow's death in 1919 two of his former students, Roland Thaxter and Edward Angus Burt along with Carroll William Dodge, the Curator of the Farlow Library and Cryptogamic Herbarium, assumed the responsibility of publishing the guide. This however, proved to be no easy task. Both Thaxter and Burt suffered from ill health, Burt lost much of his money in the 1920s stock market, and all had numerous other commitments that included teaching, research, and their own publishing. There were also problems with the printers and the plates themselves; many were worm eaten or stained while in storage. Burt explains, in his introduction, that it was worth all of the hardship to honor the memory of Dr. Farlow. Harvard Botany Library. |
