Bush Friends in Tasmania. Last Series. Native flowers, fruits and insects, drawn from nature with prose descriptions and illustrations in verse.
London: Vincent Brooks, Day and Son, 1891. Limited edition. Hardcover. Limited edition, one of 700 copies. With an inscription: To Mr. and Mrs. Flower of Avon Bank, these portraits of their Tasmanian kindred are inscribed, by L. A. Meredith". Meredith is a well-known botanical artist whose migration to Australia allowed her to draw their fascinating flora & insects with a beautifully composed Victorian sensibility. The design of the book owes much to Owen Jones, the designer of the famed "Grammar of Ornament" and Edward LaTrobe Bateman, who worked with Jones on various projects as illustrator and designer. Bateman collaborated with Meredith on both her books, providing lettering and edging details that are hallmarks of his work. Bateman was most likely a Yorkshireman, but his cousin Charles Latrobe was first Lieutenant-governor of Victoria, and he was commissioned to do the designs for Carlton Gardens in Melbourne in 1856.
The inscription is either to Charles Edward Flower, mayor of Stratford who in 1879 paid for the first permanent Shakespeare theater, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre; or his brother, who was the director of the Natural History Department of the British Museum. The plates are widely prized for their quality, which were lithographed in twelve colors.
Folio, viii, 76pp, (8, all edges gilt. With 15 full-page chromolithographic plates, and 9 monochrome plates. Green tooled gilt cloth, beveled boards, with title in boarder surrounding the author's initials circled with blossoms. Boards marked, esp lower half of rear board, spine rubbed. Internally, a few plates marked by damp, with the inscription page and plate 1 having the darkest marks. Item #17139
Price: $650.00