Edward Burne-Jones, 1905

BURNE-JONES, Sir Edward Coley (1833-1898). The Flower Book. Reproductions of thirty eight water-colour designs by Edward Burne-Jones. London: Henry Piazza & Cie. for the Fine Art Society, 1905.
Limited edition, number 128 of 300 copies numbered and initialed by the Fine Art Society. "The pictures in this book are not of flowers themselves, but of subjects suggested by their names. The first meaning of many of these has long been forgotten, and new meanings are here found for them in the imagination of the artist. He began the series for his own pleasure in 1882 ... keeping by him a list of beautiful names that he had met with & choosing subjects amongst them from time to time according to his mood. All the pictures take the same form, a circle about six inches in diameter—a kind of magic mirror in which the vision appears—and he wished them not to be separated, because, wide as is their scope, one spirit, that of pure fantasy, unites them" (preface by Georgiana Burne-Jones). Edward Burne-Jones, famed among bibliophiles for his illustrations to William Morris's Kelmscott Chaucer of 1896, produced only a small number of other book illustrations.
Large quarto (318 x 258mm). Half-title, title and text printed in green and red, titles to plates in green, captions in gilt, 38 color plates by Henry Piazza & Cie. after Burne-Jones, 4pp. manuscript facsimile of Burne-Jones' list of flower names (pale toning, a few light spots to preliminaries). Original green morocco gilt, top edge gilt (spine sunned and with wear to ends, tiny nicks to top corners).