FLOWER AND FRUIT DECORATION WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE TREATMENT OF TOWN GARDENS, TERRACES, &C....

     MARCH, Thomas C.  FLOWER AND FRUIT DECORATION WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE TREATMENT OF TOWN GARDENS, TERRACES, &C....                            

London: Harrison, 1862. 8vo. Publisher's decorated cloth. Colored frontispiece plate, viii, 108, (6), 16 pages. First, and only, edition. [Oak Spring, Flora, 71].

Only edition of an attractive book devoted to the Victorian art of flower decoration for interiors and small gardens.  One of the first works on flower arranging which was to take hold of the country after the publication of the March's guide.  The work grew out of a competition held in 1861 at the Royal Horticultural Exhibition when prizes were offered "for the best designs formed of combinations of flowers and fruits, for the decoration of the dinner table by Sir C. Wentworth Dilke and Lady Dorothy Neville."  The prize was carried away by "Mr. Thomas C. March, of the Lord Chamberlain's Office, St James Palace; but the arrangement of the flowers and fruit was the work of his sisters, Mrs. Henry Pickering and Miss March.  Thomas was clearly helped in his work by his two sisters, and probably the truth is the other way around.  The chapters include Glass Recommended as a material of Displaying Flowers; Colour and Contrast; Arrangements of Epergnes; Flower Baskets with Glass Handles; Where to place Flower and Fruit decorations; Purchase of Flowers in London; List of Flowers of each Colour which are in Season; Fifty different Groups of Flowers or of Fruit; and Town Gardens.  The final section includes a series of colored illustrations on "Colour and contrast shewing what colours will agree when three flower groups are placed on one table" and "modes of treating small gardens."  Original chromolithograph bevelled glazed boards designed by Owen Jones; rebacked.

 

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