THE BOOK DESCRIPTION
London Henri Piazza for The Fine Art Society 1905., 1905. Edition limited to 300 copies. The facsimile colour plates were produced in Paris by Henri Piazza using a combination of collotype, pochoir or stencil, and hand colouring." Begun in 1882, these designs were worked on at intervals until Burne-Jones's death, mainly on holidays at Rottingdean. They are fanciful compositions inspired by the medieval names, of flowers, almost lost to language, but no flower itself appears. Many of the designs are re-interpretations of familiar themes and are related to other works." (Burne-Jones: Arts Council). Per the Arts Council, there are three states (boxed with loose plates, red leather bound, and cloth bound), but they have no record of the number produced of each state only that the total was three hundred. Binding is folio, original leather backed folding box.
Introductory booklet laid in; 38 full color plates from Burne-Jones' watercolors, each matted and accompanied by a page of text as issued.
The plates are so vibrant and have the appearance of watercolour paintings because pure pigments hand ground from minerals such as lapis, calcedony, sulphur and others were used as the basis of the printing colours, and hand finished in watercolours. It is thought that because thet ar so faithfully reproduced, that on occasion they have been bought and sold in good faith as originals.
THE WORK
Never created for sale, his wife wrote that his original watercolours represent a deeply personal chronology of his life, a diary reflecting events and state of mind over 25 years. They give us the greatest understanding of the man.
Burne-Jones, attempts to escape a century of merely figurative art and is struggling for the abstract using figures and their stories from Greco-Roman, Biblical, Arthurian myth and symbology, in psychological landscapes. His potent use of colour and form is said to have been influential on artists such as Picasso, whose blue period began within a few months of him visiting the posthumous exhibition of Burne-Jones in London. This is recorded in Picasso's own diary. From the Flower Book, we can see why he is considered the great Symbolist.
He wrote; "I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dream of something that never was, never will be - in a light better than ever shone - in a land that no one can define or remember, only desire - and the forms divinely beautiful..."
The Flower Book perfectly exemplifies this notion.
