Oak Spring Flora: Flower Illustration from the Fifteenth Century to the Present Time, a Selection of the Rare Books, Manuscripts and Works of Art in the Collection of Rachel Lambert FROM THE PUBLISHER
This authoritative and magnificently illustrated presentation of the art of flower depiction in the West is the third volume in a handsome series of catalogues that describe the rare - in some cases unique - books, manuscripts and other works of art conserved at Oak Spring Garden Library, Upperville, Virginia, a collection formed over many years by Rachel Lambert Mellon. The author, Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, has selected more than one hundred items from Oak Spring's extensive holdings, which include superb manuscript florilegia, botanical prints, books of instruction of every kind, still-life and vanitas paintings, and various ornamental ceramics and textiles. Among them are examples by some of the greatest names ever to have worked in either scientific or decorative botanical art - Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, Georg Dionysius Ehret, Nicolas Robert and Pierre Joseph Redoute. An Oak Spring Flora is thematically organized, with topics ranging from Tulipomania and women artists to Dutch and Flemish painting and the search for exotics in remote lands. In her introductions the author provides the personal and contextual backgrounds that are essential for a real understanding and appreciation of floral illustration past and present. The sheer beauty as well as extraordinary skills encountered in, for example, manuscript florilegia by Jacob Marrel and Maria Sibylla Merian, hand-coloured books by Pierre Vallet and G. B. Ferrari, and flower studies by John Constable and others, are testament to the high status accorded floral illustration over the centuries. This latest addition to the Oak Spring Garden Library series will be of great interest to collectors of rare books and to fine-arthistorians as well as to horticulturalists, botanists and garden historians.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi is a professor of art history at the University of Siena. She has published widely on the history of art, botanical illustration, and garden design, and has also curated a number of exhibitions on those and related subjects. A member of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence, she currently serves on the Senior Fellows' Committee for Studies in Landscape Architecture at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.
FROM THE CRITICS
Mark Laird
An Oak Spring Flora will long be regarded as an indispensable reference work, a marvelous accomplishment of patron and author.—Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes
Ray Desmond
An Oak Spring Flora is the third gathering of rare books, manuscripts, paintings, drawings, engravings and objets d'art from the Oak Spring Garden Library. Lucia Tomasi ... has selected more than a hundred items which she describes with academic precision within the context of cultural history .... This book, generously illustrated with 200 plates (almost all in colour), is a delight to handle and to read. It is a worthy successor to An Oak Spring Sylva and An Oak Spring Pomona. One looks with eager anticipation to the four volumes yet to be published.—Garden History Journal
Martin Filler
[O]ne of the most splendid series of horticultural books to appear in recent years .... The series promises to become an indispensable part of the ever-broadening culture of gardens....An Oak Spring Flora has been popping up on the coffee tables of even those without inclination to pursue the contents much beyond the dazzling color reproductions. Furthermore, given the shocking prices of many recent art books, ... this is one of the publishing bargains of the decade. Organized into thematic chapters that chronologically trace the development of flower illustrations over the past five centuries, An Oak Spring Flora, though intended as a digest of and guide to closer study of the books it includes, is also fully satisfying as a survey of its subject.— House Beautiful
Joel Silver
[An] attractively produced bargain in bibliographical publishing is the latest volume of the printed catalogue of selections from Rachel Lambert Mellon's Oak Spring Garden Library....The 111 entries, which cover both original artwork and illustrations in published books, give the reader an excellent sense of the development of flower illustration over several centuries, and will appeal to those who love flowers as well as those who love books.—AB
Colin Steele
This sumptuous small folio volume is recommended to all libraries and collectors with an interest in rare books, fine art, gardens, horticulture and botany to name but five categories! ... The degree of bibliographical and analytical detail provides a superb backdrop to the colour illustrations of the 'fragile timeless beauty' of the flora described. One can only express admiration for the original collector and the superb catalogue and textual description of the collection which now surrounds it. The final volume is a work of art in itself. This is American scholarship and book production at its best and produced at a price which is outstanding value.—Antiquarian Book Monthly
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