BANKS, Sir Joseph & Daniel SOLANDER

Captain Cook's Florilegium...

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Lion and Unicorn Press [Royal College of Art], London, 1973. Large folio, with 30 engravings; a fine copy, specially bound by Zaehnsdorf in black Nigerian goatskin and Japanese silk, cloth case. The botany of the Endeavour voyage: this magnificent printing by the Royal College of Art in London from original eighteenth-century copper-plates appeared in an edition of only one hundred copies, on a specially hand-made paper; the edition was fully subscribed long before it was completed.

The original botanical drawings from Cook's first voyage by Sydney Parkinson, along with the actual specimens collected by Daniel Solander and Joseph Banks, were used to make detailed and accurate paintings under Banks' supervision when the expedition returned to London. Following this they were engraved, and we know that Banks intended to oversee full publication of the collection of engravings. In fact only a proof impression was made and the undertaking abandoned. The British Museum (Natural History) holds the original copper-engraved plates, as well as the drawings and specimens themselves, and a set of the proof impressions made from the copper-engravings.

Between 1900 and 1905 lithographic copies of 318 of these proof impressions were published as Illustrations of Australian Plants collected in 1770. The copper-plates themselves remained unused, until in 1960 it was decided that the Royal College of Art should print a selection of the most beautiful. The result, after thirteen years of planning, was this splendid production, which for the first time showed the extraordinary strength of the images. Perfectly printed, rich impressions in strong black ink, they show the important botany of the Cook voyage to great advantage, and at the same time make it a matter for great regret that no eighteenth-century edition ever appeared. These very pure images present a more austere interpretation (though quite as beautiful) of Banks' magnum opus than the printing in colours from all the plates completed in 1990 by Alecto Historical Editions.
Hill, 52.

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• libraire: Hordern House (AUSTRALIA)