[NURSERYMAN'S GUIDE FOLDING PRESENTATION DISPLAY]

Rochester, NY: Vredenburg & Co.; United Litho. & Printing Co, 1911. Very good. Large folding Nurseryman's presentation display with 10 chromolithograph seed samples, pasted on to stiff board covered with black cloth, allowing the display to be folded into a smaller, more portable size. Unfolded: 710 x 424 mm. Folded: 215 x 140 mm. Cloth with some soiling, outside edges of the four chromolithographs in the corners with evidence of biopredation (SEE IMAGES). Overall in very good antiquarian condition. ART IN THE SERVICE OF COMMERCE, BEING AN AMERICAN NURSERYMAN'S FLOWER SEED "CATALOGUE" IN THE FORM OF A PRESENTATION DISPLAY, GRAPHICALLY CONTEXTUALIZING THE PRACTICE OF SEED PEDDLERS IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY.

The folding display format of Nurseryman's is not often encountered, and rarely mentioned in the standard literature. Whereas the actual nursery for which the present display was created is not identified, the chromolithographs were printed by the famed Rochester firms of Vredenburg & Co. and United Litho. & Printing Co. which merged in 1910. Featured here are Tulips (one of which is dated 1911), Daffodils, Crocuses, Hyacinths, Lilies, and Japanese and German Irises (the latter dated 1901).

Vintage Nurseryman's Guides provide a "cornucopia" of American chromolithography at its apogee. "Nurserymen's plates were an American innovation. They were made by various methods, the most distinctive being painted in watercolors. In design and coloring, these plates were more akin to folk painting than to the commercial art of their time" (Charles von Ravenswaay, "Drawn and Colored from Nature," in Antiques Magazine, March 1983, pp. 594-599). See also Karl Sanford Kabelac, "Nineteenth-Century Rochester Fruit and Flower Plates" in: University of Rochester Library Bulletin, vol. XXXV, 1982).