Trew, Christoph Jakob & Vogel, Benedict Christian

10 parts (decuriae) in 1 volume, broadsheets and imperial 2 half sheets. 10 engraved titles, letters in red, black, and gold, 3 mezzotint portraits of Trew, G.D. Ehret and J.J Haid, 100 fine hand-coloured engraved plates after Georg Dionysius Ehret by Johann Jacob, each with the first word of caption highlighted in gold. 

Contemporary English diced Russia gilt, covers with outer decorative rule and roll-tool border, spine in eight compartments with raised bands, lettered in one, the others with symmetrical overall tooling composed from various small tools (flowers in the main), narrow gilt turn-ins (upper joint very slightly split at foot, and small section chipped at head.)

Beriah Botfield (Christie’s London, Books, 30 March 1994, lot 89)

Nissen BBI 1997; Great Flower Books, 78; Dunthorne, 309; Hunt, 539; Stafleu/Cowan, 15.131

First edition of one of the greatest 18th–Century botanical colour-plate books, without the very rare supplement by Vogel (published in two decuriae in 1790-1792). Trew and Ehret's celebrated collaboration, magnificently coloured by hand. The Plantae selectae is considered by Nissen to be the finest botanical work ever printed in Germany. Trew, physician at Nuremberg and amateur botanist, admired the talent and skill of his younger countryman, Georg Ehret, a gardener and flower painter. This work is their major collaboration, although Ehret did contribute several drawings to Trew's Hortus nitidissimis. Ehret is one of the great painters of flowering plants in the eighteenth century and all 100 plates of the Plantae selectae were painted by him. Trew died in 1769, leaving the last three parts uncompleted. The work was finished by Benedict Christian Vogel, Professor of Botany at the University of Altdorf.

The work was conceived as early as 1742 when Trew wrote to Christian Thran in Carlsruhe: "Every year I receive some beautifully painted exotic plants (by Ehret) and have already more than one hundred of them, which with other pieces executed by local artists, should later on, Deo volante, constitute an appendicem to Weinmann’s publication but will, I hope, find a better reception tan his". In 1748, agreement was reached that Johann Jacob Haid from Augsburg should provide the engravings, and the first part appeared in 1750. Trew died before the text of the last three deduriae was written and before the illustrations of Decuriae IX and X were printed. The work was completed by Benedict Christian Vogel. In a letter in Latin to Trew, Linnaeus expressed his opinion: "The miracles of our century in the natural sciences are your work of Ehret’s plants, Edward’s work of birds and Roesel’s of insects, nothing equal was seen in the past and will be in your future.” (Gerta Calmann, Ehret Flower Painter Extraordinary, 1977, 9.97).