A New York Times Article on “Gardening by the Book”

A recent New York Times article describes the Grolier Club’s exhibition, “Gardening by the Book: Celebrating 100 Years of the Garden Club of America,” running now through July 27. For two years Oak Knoll has been the distributor of books for the Grolier Club, and the accompaniment to this exhibition is no exception. The article describes some of the intriguing images and themes from the exhibition, including some from the oldest book in the show: a 1612 catalog of bulbs and flowers by Emmanuel Sweert. Below you’ll find excerpts from the article along with some images from the book.

Check out the full article here

Buy the book here! 

“Organized by the writer and art historian Arete Warren,“Gardening by the Book: Celebrating 100 Years of the Garden Club of America” presents more than 125 illustrated volumes about flowers and gardening, dating from the early 17th to the mid-20th century. All are from the Garden Club of America Library, of which Ms. Warren is chairman.”

“Live flowers have a lot going for them. Even the most common example can strike you as a natural, inherently beautiful work of art, whomever or whatever you may credit for creating it. Pictures of flowers, on the other hand, can be intriguing for what they reveal about human intellectual history.”

“Sweert’s book is open to a page depicting 10 varieties of tulips in color, suggesting how Sweert’s opus may have been an early impetus for Tulipmania, the early-17th-century craze that caused the prices of tulip bulbs to soar to absurd heights.”

Treasures from the archives of the Imprimerie Nationale

The New York Times posted a great article about the current exhibition being held at the Grolier Club “Printing for Kingdom, Empire & Republic: Treasures From the Archives of the Imprimerie Nationale.” The exhibition contains hundreds of historical punches, matrcies of various typefaces, dozens of books to view, and reveals exquisite artifacts that have never before been shown outside of France.

In addition, a publication Printing for Kingdom, Empire, and Republic: Treasures from the Archives of the Imprimerie Nationale edited by George H. Fletcher was created to accompany the exhibition and is available from Oak Knoll. It tells the story of the Imprimerie Nationale from the royal printers established by François I in 1538 to its triumphant survival in the present day. The book surveys a wealth of objects, all classified as French monuments historiques, and includes artifacts of various printing processes from the days of François I to today. This new publication is beautifully illustrated containing five pages of color plates, four plates in collotypes, illustrations of typefaces, and more.

Click here to read more about the new book, and click here to read the article in The New York Times.

A mention from the New York Times

The Caxton Club publication, Other People’s Books: Association Copies and the Stories They Tell, distributed by Oak Knoll, was mentioned in The New York Times in an article titled, “Book Lovers Fear Dim Future for Notes in the Margins.” Click here to read the article and click here to find out more information on the book.