Pescatorea. Iconographie des Orchidées by LINDEN Jean Jules - 1860

Brussels: M. Hayez pour Librairie de Charles Muqardt, 1860. First edition. full brown morocco, tooled in blind, spine with extra gilt and two gilt lettered black morocco labels, marbled endpapers, marbled edges. Spine ends, joints and edges with slight rubbing. Plate No. 1 laid down , colouring and text intact. Folio c. 440 x 324 mm). Volume I (the only one published) Illustrated with 48 hand coloured lithographed plates (all plates and tissue guards present), by F. Detollenaere after Detollenaere and Maubert Linden (1817-1898) who was a native of Luxembourg moved to Belgium in his youth and imported more than 1100 different species of orchids during his life. He was an orchid hunter par excellence ... and spent ten years in the western hemisphere. He returned to work in Brussels in 1845 and with the assistance of his son Lucien, he founded the first major international competitor to the British orchid house Messrs. Sander's, Horticulture Internationale.The work is named in honour of one of his major clients the amateur orchid grower, J. P. Pescatore, who had "la plus riche collection d'Orchidees du continent" at his home Chateua del aCelle-St.-Cloud. Pescatore's untimely death, according to Linden's preface, meant the withdrawal of Pescatore's financial support for the work and the continuation of the work was not possible past the 12 livraisons -The Orchid observed no. 16[Nissen BBI 1196. Stafleu & Cowan TL2 4622. Great Flower Books, p. 113].