[Nouvelle iconographie des camellias [sic]: contenant les figures et la description des plus rares, des plus nouvelles et des plus belles variétés de ce genre.

4to: 250 pl. (lacking title, last text leaf underlaid, some lvs loosening from their guards, some pl. cut short touching the image or the printed marginalia).

Contemp. half green shagreen, cloth covers (corners rubbed), flat spine.

Five last years of this sumptuous and rare periodical on the Asian flowering plant camellia (publ. between 1848-1860) by the Ghent horticulturists Alexandre-Jacques and Ambroise Verschaffelt. Each year of publication contains 12 instalments of 4 plates with an accompanying text. Illustrated with 250 hand-coloured lithographed plates heightened with gum arabic by G. Severeyns and L. Stroobant after Bernard-Léon a.o. "The work is one of the rarest and greatest of the nineteenth-century camellia iconographies. The Verschaffelts were a family of nurserymen specialising in camellias and published this book really as a catalogue of newly introduced species and recently developed hybrids which were available from their nurseries" (De Belder).
Ref. BnF. - Pritzel 9743. - Nissen (BBI) 2056. - De Belder 374. - Sitwell p. 161. - Stafleu & Cowan 16.057.