Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts, Including Americana

Small folio (295 x 202 mm). Woodcut portrait of Bock; 579 woodcut illustrations on 531 leaves. (Title-page and a6 portion of 3G1 provided in facsimile, repairs to lower margin of a few leaves occasionally touching letters, some soiling and staining.) Contemporary pigskin over beveled wooden boards, decorated in blind, later lettering-piece on spine, with clasps and catches (some soiling). Provenance: Early annotations on rear blank leaf.

An enlarged edition of Bock's great herbal, first published in 1546, is one of the most popular herbals of the 16th century. Bock, one of the German founding fathers of botany, marked the transition between medieval and modern botany with his insistence on empirical descriptions and illustrations. He describes the potential pharmacological use of the species of plants and includes for the first time, information about tubers and mushrooms. The present edition includes the Teutsche Speisskammer, which discusses food and drink preparations and describes milk, butter, cheese, honey, sugar, salt, spice, herbs, and vegetables. Many of the woodcuts are after David Kandel, and several are signed "D K." Cleveland Collections 138; Nissen BBI 182.