Reichenbachia: Orchids Illustrated and Described (4 volumes)

Henry Frederick Conrad Sander

London: J. French for Henry Sotheran & Co and F. Sander & Co. of St. Albans, 1892, 1895

[Orchidology: Great Flower Books]  2 series, bound in 4 volumes.  Elephant folios, 53 x 40 cm.  Bound in contemporary red half morocco.  6 spine compartments and 5 raised bands.  All edges gilt.  Bindings sound, with minor shelf wear, rubbing.  Text in English, French and German.  192 fine chromolithographic plates, most finished by hand, by Joseph Mansell, G. Leutzsch and J.L. Macfarlane after Henry Moon, W.H. Fitch, A.H. Loch and C. Storer.  

  An "important and authoritative work for orchid growers" (Great Flower Books).  Named in honor of the botanist and celebrated orchidologist, Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach (1824-1889).  "By modern standards the work was of a monstrous size ... Where the orchid was concerned, Sander never spared himself, but even so, the care lavished on the Reichenbachia still provokes astonishment. Apart from the elegance of Moon's drawings, the technical standards would have been a tribute to any large printing house. The blocks were hand-made, out of wood; and the chromolithographs were produced by the use of as many as twenty inks. The cost to Sander was enormous, and it is said to have been well over £7,000 ... It is no wonder that Sander often remarked in later years that the project almost ruined him" (A. Swinson, Frederick Sander: The Orchid King, 1970). Great Flower Books p 75; Nissen BBI 1722; Stafleu-Cowan TL2 10.219.