Leopold Trattinick | Neue Arten von Pelargonien deutschen Ursprunges, Vienna, 1825-43, contemporary boards

Botany, especially South African, the property of John Venn, Singapore

Leopold Trattinick

Neue Arten von Pelargonien deutschen Ursprunges. Vienna: for the author, 1825-1843

FIRST EDITION, 6 volumes, 8vo (235 x 146mm.), 264 hand-coloured engraved plates on 203 leaves after drawings by Blaschek, contemporary marbled boards, yellow edges, extremities slightly rubbed, covers slightly worn, some plates faded, slight spotting, some to titles

A FINE, FRESH COPY, WITH AN UNRECORDED PLATE, OF ONE OF TRATTINNICK'S RAREST WORKS, devoted to species and varieties of pelargoniums, and intended as a supplement to Robert Sweet's Geraniaceae. The newly-discovered wealth of pelargoniums from South Africa created something of a craze for their cultivation at the beginning of the nineteenth-century. Stafleu (and others) state that plate 197 and its accompanying text leaf were not published, but both are present in this copy, and have been tipped in at the appropriate place. This plate is lithographed rather than engraved, and it was probably issued in very small numbers as a supplement after the main volume was published, hence its absence in most copies. ABPC records only one other copy of this work—the De Belder copy—at auction, which lacks the extra plate.

LITERATURE:

Dunthorne 308; Great Flower Books, p.78; Nissen BBI 1991; Stafleu TL2 14.889