“Of Green Leaf, Bird, and Flower”: Artists’ Books and the Natural World
Edited by Elisabeth R. Fairman
With contributions by Laurie Clark, Mandy Bonnell, Tracey Bush, Jane Hyslop, Patrick Sweeney, Dizzy Pragnell, Tim Barringer, Ron King, Clare Bryan, Lisa Ford, John Dilnot, Colin Sackett, Martin Postle, Eileen Hogan, Rebecca Salter, Clive Phillpot, and Sarah Welcome
Published by the Yale Center for British Art in association with Yale University Press
248 pages, 8 1/4 x 10 1/4 inches, 250 color + b/w illustrations, ISBN 9780300204247
Publication date: July 1, 2014
Description
“Of Green Leaf, Bird, and Flower”: Artists’ Books and the Natural World, edited by Elisabeth Fairman, Senior Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Center, and published to accompany the exhibition of the same title, is designed to evoke an early naturalist’s field guide, complete with collecting pocket. In addition to an introduction by Fairman, it contains essays by Robert McCracken Peck, Senior Fellow, Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Drexel University, highlighting the scientific pursuits of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain; Molly Duggins, Lecturer, Department of Art History and Theory, National Art School, Sydney, Australia, exploring the aesthetically oriented activities of self-taught naturalists during the Victorian era; and David Burnett, poet and book collector from Edinburgh, Scotland, writing on twentieth-century illustrated books, with a focus on the little-known wood engraver Sister Margaret Tournour, maker of exquisite small prints of the natural world. The essays are followed by a sumptuous “Field Guide to the British Countryside,” with statements by artists, naturalists, and scholars.
