Jacob Bigelow's American medical botany, 1817-1821 : an examination of the origin, printing, binding, and distribution of America's first color plate book : with special emphasis on the manner of making and printing its colored plates / by Richard J. Wolfe

Object Details

Notes: "Two hundred and sixty copies of this work have been printed, of which two hundred and forty-five are for sale."; "The publication of this second edition has ... allowed the author to silently correct a number of minor typographical errors ... to make a few stylistic improvements ... to incorporate into its chapter VI some newly uncovered evidence on the reception of Bigelow's American medical botany in colonial [sic] Philadelphia ... and to add an index"--P. xii.; Wolfe's chapter 4 describes a process by which Bigelow's plates were printed on stone, an entirely conjectural account based solely on the evidence of a cost estimate for printing American medical botany that included 60 stones. This is definitively refuted in Philip Weimerskirch, "The beginning of color printing in America", in Printing history, no. 48 (2005), p. 25-40. Weimerskirch demonstrates that the estimate in question actually dates from no earlier than 1837, for a projected but never published new edition with lithographic illustrations.; "The two illustrations mounted into the first and now the second edition of this study comprise original engraved plates--one hand-colored and the other left uncolored--that Jacob Bigelow had made up when he initially intended to illustrate his work in the usual hand-colored way."--P. ix.

Physical description: 128 p., [2] leaves of plates : 2 ill. (1 col.) ; 24 cm

Topic: Color printing--History; Illustration of books; Book industries and trade--History