Burne-Jones, Sir Edward

The Flower Book. Reproductions of Thirty Eight Watercolour Designs... London: Henry Piazza & Co. for the Fine Art Society, 1905



Folio (12 3/4 x 10 1/4 in.; 324 x 260 mm). Half-title, 38 colored reproductions of Burne-Jones's drawings, 4-page facsimile of his list of flower names at end, title printed in red and green, text printed in green. Publisher's dark-green half cloth over lighter green cloth, gold-stamped title on upper cover and on spine, green marbled endpapers, top-edge gilt, others uncut; corners slightly bumped.

Lora Teschner (bookplate)

Limited edition, number 1 of 300. "The pictures in this book are not of flowers themselves, but of subjects suggested by their names. The first meaning of many of these has long been forgotten, and new meanings are here found for them in the imagination of the artist. He began the series for his own pleasure in 1882, as rest from more laborious work, keeping by him a list of beautiful names that he had met with & choosing subjects amongst them from time to time according to his mood. All the pictures take the same form, a circle about six inches in diameter kind of magic mirror in which the vision appears and he wished them not to be separated, because, wide as is their scope, one spirit, that of pure fantasy, unites them. ... In some of the pictures details remain unfinished; but both colour and design are always perfectly clear, and are so intimately characteristic of the painter that I have sometimes thought this book contains a fuller expression of himself than exists elsewhere in his work" (Georgiana Burne-Jones, from the preface).