DEWEY, D. M. Salesman's sample book containing 60 color plates of fruits, flowers, and trees.

DEWEY, D. M. Salesman's sample book containing 60 color plates of fruits, flowers, and trees. Oblong 8vo, contemporary wallet-style morocco with the owner's name in gilt on the flap ("Young & Rennison, Sioux City, IA"), minor wear and worming; plates with minor finger soiling, contemporary handwritten pricing information on each plate. Sioux City (plates printed in Rochester, NY), circa 1880

colorful sample book from a western nursery. The plates include both pochoir and chromolithographs. "Selections of these plates were used as illustrated catalogues by travelling salesmen who peddled the stock of the nurseries they represented . . . The earliest plates were simple watercolours, but later, as demand grew, the technique of theorem paintings coloured with the help of stencils was used to multiply the number of copies as quickly and as cheaply as possible"--Raphael, An Oak Spring Pomona 64 (for an 1866 catalogue).
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