Hardcover. San Francisco, Pomegranate, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 124 pages. MF Cardamone creates artwork that harks back to centuries past but is deeply rooted in the present. Her cultural and sociological commentary, delivered in words and images, reveals her sly sense of humor and love of all things botanical. An artist fluent in various media, including painting, sculpture, and limited-edition clothing, Cardamone discovered her passion for plants when she restored a garden at her seventy-five-year old farmhouse near Philadelphia. She enrolled in the Barnes Foundation Arboretum School and learned to collect specimens and create herbarium sheets, documenting the many medicinal uses of plants along with their history and landscaping potential. She picked up old books of botanical illustration, and herbals from a time when a pharmacist might prescribe a homemade tea to cure whatever ailed you. When her studies expanded to medical QiGong and Hatha yoga, her artwork took on a spiritual dimension. Cardamone begins with a plant specimen and watercolor paper, then turns to gouache, pen and ink, and digital imagery. She balances the scientific aspect of her work with a large dose of humor in the selection and placement of cultural icons from the plant's home environment.
Hardcover. London, Merrell Holberton/Natural History Museum, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 128 pages, 62 color plates, 33 b&w illustrations. A detailed monograph on this early 19th century natural history artist. In publisher's shrinkwrap.
Hardcover. London, Wordsworth, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 342 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Illustrated with full color paintings by P.J. Redoute. Clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, reprint, 1849, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 284 pages, illustrated with 24 brilliant color plates including the frontispiece. Original green cloth with gilt decorated front cover, gilt design on spine, top edge gilt. Covers with light edge wear, chipping to top of spine. Title page states New Edition, so assumed a reprint. The plates do not appear to be hand-colored but chromolithographs, all brilliantly colored and except for the frontispiece (which has a touch of foxing) all are clean and unblemished. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf.
Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st, 1937, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 134 pages. Hardcover. Green cloth boards with gilt titles to cover & spine. Frontis illustration, The Spoon and Bicolor Pear Gourds, in full color. Over 35 full page illustrations in bw. Previous owner's inscription to front endpaper. Light foxing to preliminary pages. Light toning throughout. Original dust jacket with moderate wear, tears, chips, price-clipped, & now protected with a plastic cover. A very nice volume.
Hardcover. New York, G.H. Buek, 1st, 1894, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, oblong light beige cloth with gilt title and decoration. Non-Paginated. Illustrated with 288 clean full color plates. Front and rear hinges cracked but holding with spine cloth. Light wear to covers. Originally published in parts as a Botanical Fine Art Weekly publication.
