MATHEWS, F. Schuyler (1854-1938)
The Golden Flower. Chrysanthemum. Verses by Edith M. Thomas, Richard Henry Stoddard, Alice Ward Bailey, Celia Thaxter, Kate Upson Clark, Louis Carroll, Margaret Deland, Robert Browning, & Oliver Wendell Holmes. Collected, arranged and embellished with original designs by F. Schuyler Mathews
Boston: L. Prang & Co., 1890. 4to. (11 3/4 x 9 7/8 inches). Half-title, title, Introduction, Prologue, Epilogue; chromolithographed allegorical frontispiece of the Chrysanthemum personified, 15 chromolithographic plates after water-colours by Mathews, James & Sidney Callowhill, and Alois Lunzer; 18 verses set within elaborate chrysanthemum borders (some printed in gold and black, others in colour).
Publisher's original pink and green cloth panels with gilt and blind tooled floral designs, gilt lettering panel on the front board. Textured, gilt repeat patterned endpapers
A visually opulent and poetically rich celebration of the chrysanthemum, this late 19th-century gift book exemplifies the era's fascination with floral symbolism, seasonal verse, and Japonisme.
Created at the height of Louis Prang & Co.'s chromolithographic innovation, The Golden Flower brings together verse by leading American and British poets, including Edith M. Thomas, Richard Henry Stoddard, Alice Ward Bailey, Celia Thaxter, Kate Upson Clark, Lewis Carroll, Margaret Deland, Robert Browning, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, with the refined aesthetic sensibility and botanical precision of illustrator F. Schuyler Mathews. The elaborate chromolithographs not only depict chrysanthemums in stunning detail but also reflect the influence of Japanese design principles and the growing popularity of East Asian flora in Western decorative and visual culture. This rare Prang production belongs to a genre of high-art gift books that combined fine printing, illustration, and literary content for the cultivated domestic reader.The book was marketed as a luxurious holiday gift volume, distinguished by its exceptional delicacy and refinement of colour. The chrysanthemum, newly fashionable in late-19th century horticulture and art, is here elevated through a synthesis of poetic sentiment and botanical splendor. Louis Prang, often called the "father of the American Christmas card," was one of the foremost figures in the development and refinement of chromolithography in the United States. A German immigrant based in Boston, Prang elevated the medium from commercial ephemera to a respected art form by producing high-quality prints, illustrated books, and art education materials. His firm's technical precision and sophisticated colour work, often requiring 20 or more separate stones per image, set new standards for colour printing. The Golden Flower exemplifies Prang's aesthetic ambition and his mission to democratize art by making beautiful, affordable images available to the American middle class. His influence laid the foundation for the explosion of colour printing in American publishing at the end of the 19th century.
See also: Wichmann, Japonisme (1981); The Publishers' Weekly, vol. 38 (1890), p. 323.
Item #42250
Price: $500.00