Jacob Bigelow's American Medical Botany 1817 - 1821. An Examination of the Origin, Printing, Binding and Distribution of America's First Color Plate Book. With Special Emphasis on the Manner of Making and Printing Its Colored Plates.
North Hills, PA: Bird & Bull Press, 1979. Hard Cover. Fine. Item #7583
Octavo, [xii]121 pages; number 211 of 300 numbered copies printed. Quarter red leather over decorative boards. America's first color plate book: "The two illustrations mounted into this study comprise original, engraved plates - one hand-colored and one left uncolored - which Jacob Bigelow had made up when he initially intended to illlustrate his edition in the usual, hand-colored way.....led him and his cohorts to invent a mechanical method of printing the plates and coloring them concurrently. This resulted in the abandonment of these initial plates, some of which had been colored by artists and some left untouched. These surplus plates, amounting to several thousand, came into the Boston Medical Library in 1927..... and it was deemed desirable to mount two of them - a colored and an uncolored specimen - into each copy of this edition....." (p. ix). A fine copy.
Price: $250.00