Item #104583 Grapes And Grape Vines Of California. Edward Bosqui.

Grapes And Grape Vines Of California.

1877. [San Francisco: Edward Bosqui, 1877]. San Francisco: John Windle, 1980.

Folio, [64] pp. 10 color plates with text. A fine copy in sheets and portfolio as issued.

§ Limited to 40 copies for sale in sheets; this exact facsimile of the first California ampelography to show the grapes in superb color printing was reissued by San Francisco printers and binders from one of the few extant perfect copies (now at the Lilly Library). The edition was not completed and only 65 sets were released (of which 25 were bound).

"Originally published by the California State Viticultural Association in 1877 and printed by the renowned San Francisco firm of Edward Bosqui and Co., the volume is of paramount importance both in the canon of literature on grapes and vines and in the great tradition of fine printing in San Francisco. Its excellent lines not only in the technically accurate descriptive text but equally in the ten beautiful oleographic color plates after watercolors by Hannah Millard, the first color illustrations of the grapes of California to be published. The book was originally issued in parts for subscribers in a very small edition and even at the time few complete sets are likely to have been assembled. Of those a significant proportion was to be lost or irreparably damaged in the disaster of April 1906. Today only six complete and undamaged copies can be located in both public and private collections nationwide." (Prospectus)

Zamorano Select (2010) 34A writes that “in his valuable introduction to the Windle facsimile” Kevin Starr provides historical background for the original edition. “Both as a work on viticulture and as a color-plate book, ‘Grapes and Grape Vines of California’ was an unprecedented achievement for a California press” as indeed was the facsimile which was so impressive that Harcourt Brace Jovanovich reissued it in a reduced format trade edition that went through two large printings before being remaindered. Bosqui's Grape Vines of 1877 is among the rarest of American color plate books. Item #104583

Price: $3,000.00