Leaf and Flower Pictures, and How to Make Them

New York: Anson D. F. Randolph, 1857. First Edition. First printing. Small quarto (20cm). Brown cloth stamped in blind and gilt; plain endpapers; 5pp; 8 color plates. Extensively marked and annotated in ink and pencil, including 1875 ownership inscriptions throughout. Rubbed and shaken, lacking front free endpaper and one tissue guard, foxed throughout: a sound copy, just Good. The only author's attribution are the initials "H.B." at end of Preface. Though the book is generally described as having hand-colored plates, the illustrations are actually chromolithographs, a quite early use of the process in an American book .

A manual for the creation of decorative displays of dried flowers, leaves, mosses, and seaweeds, illustrated in color. This copy well used and annotated by Cary Marx Barton of Hanover Lodge, Frederick County, VA. Barton seems to have used the blank tissue guards and plate versos as a commonplace book and copybook, practicing her signature and transcribing poems by L.E.L., James Gates Percival, and others. At the rear endpapers she has drawn two diagrams showing how to use the fingers of the hand as a mnenomic aid to remembering the books of the Bible.