Publications
On this page you may preview any of the Oak Spring Garden Library Volumes.
Click here for a preview of An Oak Spring Sylva
An Oak Spring Sylva is the first of a series of catalogues describing selections of the rare books, manuscripts, works of art, and related artifacts in the Oak Spring Garden Library, a collection fromed by Rachel Lambert Mellon.
This publication, discusses books and manuscripts on trees, is the smallest volume of the series, describing nearly fifty books, manuscripts, or drawings, from a tiny 1555 book on oaks to early nineteenth-century advice on large-scale tree-planting, a range including both great books, like Evelyn's Sylva, Duhamel's Traite des Arbres, and Michaux's North American Sylva, and more modest ones, like Marshall's American Grove, which helped introduce the riches of American forests to European gardens in the eighteenth century. Each description makes clear the background of each book and its relationship to others, while a generous number of illustrations in color and black and white help to give an impression of their contents.
Click here for a preview of An Oak Spring Pomona
An Oak Spring Pomona is the second book in the series.
The Pomona describes one hundred books and manuscripts about fruit, with illustrations taken from some of the most beautiful books on the subject, as well as from original drawings and paintings. The earliest book described is Bussato's Giardino di Agricoltura of 1592, the latest The Herefordshire Pomona, and encyclopedia of apples and pears from the 1870s. In between there is a gathering of fruit books large and small: La Quintinie's Instruction pour les Jardins Fruitiers, first published in 1690 and translated by John Evelyn three years later, Duhamel's Traite des Arbres Fruitiers, and nearly fifty others from France and Britain, among them Brookshaw's giant Pomona Britannica and a handful of pocket-sized books of directions for grafting and cultivating the best varieties available.
Click here for a preview of An Oak Spring Flora
An Oak Spring Flora is the third book in the series.
This authoritative and magnificently illustrated presentation of the art of flower depiction in the West is the third volume in a series of catalogues that describe the rare-in some cases unique-books, manuscripts, and other works of art conserved at Oak Spring Garden Library, a collection formed over many years by Rachel Lambert Mellon. The author, Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, has selected more than one hundred items from Oak Spring's extensive holdings, which include superb manuscript florilegia, botanical prints, books of instruction of every kind, still-life and vanitas paintings, and various ornamental ceramics and textiles. Among them are examples by some of the greatest names ever to have worked in either scientific or decorative botanical art-Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, Georg Dionysius Ehret, Nicolas Robert, and Pierre Joseph Redoute.
Click here for a preview of An Oak Spring Herbaria
An Oak Spring Herbaria is the fourth book in the series.
by Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi
This authoritative and magnificently illustrated book on herbals is the fourth volume in a remarkable series of catalogues that describes rare books, manuscripts, and other works of art conserved at the Oak Spring Garden Library, Upperville, Virginia, a collection formed over many years by Rachel Lambert Mellon. Previously published volumes include An Oak Spring Sylva on trees, An Oak Spring Pomona on fruit, and An Oak Spring Flora on flowers.
For An Oak Spring Herbaria, the author has selected sixty-three works from the Library’s extensive collections. The volume is thematically organized and arranged into the following chapters : ‘Late Medieval Herbals’; ‘The Great Age of Renaissance Botany’; ‘Herbals and Plants from Distant Lands’; ‘Herbals by Herbalists, Pharmacists, and Physicians’; ‘Herbals of the Botanical Gardens and Private Gardens of Europe’; ‘Curious and Strange Herbals’; ‘Dried Specimens and Nature Printing’; and ‘American Herbals.’