Beschreibung:

BURNE-JONES, Sir Edward Coley (1833-1898). The Flower Book. Reproductions of thirty eight water-colour designs by Edward Burne-Jones . Introduction by Georgiana Burne-Jones London: Henry Piazza & Cie. for the Fine Art Society, 1905. Large 4° (320 x 262mm). Half-title, title and text printed in green and red, titles to plates in green. 38 coloured plates by Henry Piazza & Cie. after Burne-Jones, 4pp. manuscript facsimile printed in black, extra-illustrated with the loosely-inserted 2 leaf subscription form printed in red and black. Original green morocco gilt, t.e.g., within the publisher's original green cloth drop-sided box, titled in gilt on upper cover, lined with cream velvet (light scuffing to extremities of box). Provenance : sale Sotheby's, 14 May 1968, sold for £60 to Pickering & Chatto. A VERY FINE COPY. Limited edition of 300 copies numbered and initialled by the Fine Art Society, this number 34. '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... 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 - a 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... The idea of reproducing [the series]... was considered from the first, but seemed then to be an impossibility. The wonderful advance of colour-printing, however, in late years, and the special gift of M: Piazza, have made me believe that my husband's original intention can now be carried out...' (preface by Georgiana Burne-Jones .