Fauché, B.
Histoire naturelle, botanique.
[France, unpublished, ca. 1850]. Folio (39.8 x 28.8 cm). Title page with polychrome title and vignette, heightened with gold; 15 tissue-guarded plates with watercolour images of fungi (1) and flowering plants with explanatory text leaves in fine calligraphy. Original full embossed and pebbled black calf; gilt-stippled board edges and fine gilt inner dentelles. Iridescent endpapers. Spine with five raised bands and gilt title; front board with gilt initials "B. F." (= Berthe Fauché); rear board with gilt vignette "Maison des Oiseaux". All edges gilt.
A fine, attractively bound album of large watercolour illustrations of flowering plants (and one with fungi), showing examples of the 15 classes of plants, covering 62 "principal" families. All are very accurately drawn and coloured by Berthe Fauché. This likely follows the system designed by the French botanist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (1748 -1836) which replaced the overly simple and arbitrary system of Linnaeus, and contained 76 families in all. The rear board vignette shows a gilt-embossed burgundy morocco bookplate of Arpad Plesch on the front pastedown. Nothing is known about Berthe Fauché, except that she was an accomplished artist. Plesch (1889-1974) was one of the foremost collectors of botanical works. Slight rubbing to boards, a few tissue guards a bit foxed, creased, partly torn or partly chipped in the margins, otherwise very good, clean, the plates not foxed. A beautiful work.