Nurseryman's Stock Book from New York State 

Obl. 8vo salesman's stock book, leather with gilt lettering on front, most of which has been covered by a "leatherette" patch. Most of the lettering is gone, but it appears to have said "Chautauqua Nursery Co." This is a typical sample book with one exemplar per page. Front pastedown has state Department of Agriculture inspection certificate, 1899-1900. Back has marbled endpapers.

Most of these pages were lithographed by Rochester Lithographing Co., Rochester, NY. There are a few others (Brett Litho.), and the Rochester pages are on different weights of paper, and with slightly different styles, which indicates, like most of these stock books, pages were added or taken out as stock changed (and customer preferences changed).

Roses - General Jacqueminot, Coquette des Alps, Clothilde Soupert, Perpetual White Moss (2), Gem of the Prairie, Glory de Dijon, Alfred Colomb, Mrs. John Laing, Baltimore Belle, Prince Camille de Rohan, American Beauty,  La France, La Reine, Anna de Diesbach, Sunset, Crested Moss, Empress of China

Other - Yucca Fillamentosa, Ampelopsis Veitchii, Trumpet Flower, Hydrangea Paniculata Grandiflora, Spirea - Aurea, Weigela - Variegated-leaved, Double Altheas, Prunus Triloba, Purple Fringe / Smoke Tree

Clematis - Clematis, Henry II, Coccinea

Honeysuckle - Hall's Japan, Tartarian / Upright

Trees - Paul's Double-Flowering Thorn, Camperdown Weeping Elm, Kilmarnock Weeping Willow, Caltalpa, Cut-leaved Weeping Birch, Purple Leaved Beach, Wier's Cut-leaved Silver Maple, Oak-leaved Mountain Ash, White Flowering Horse-Chestnut, Hardy Magnolia, Norway Spruce, English, Irish or Swedish Juniper

Shrubs - Viburnum Plicatum, Honey Locust, Cornus Elegantissima

Fruits - Prunus Pissardi, American Mulberry, Russian Apricot

Grapes - Early Ohio, Diamond, The Moyer, Brighton, Niagara, Eaton, Pocklington, Campbell's Early, Moore's Early, Green Mountain, Worden's Seedling, Vergennes

Currants - Fay's Prolific, Cherry, White Grape, Black Champion, Industry, Downing

Berries - Golden Queen, Cuthbert, Cumberland, Kansas, Shaffer's Colossal, Snyder, Erie or Uncle Tom, Ohio, Wachusett's Thornless, Lucretia Dewberry

Quinces - Japan, Meech's Prolific, Orange,  Rea's Mammoth

Peaches - Champion, Wheatland, Crawford's Early, Wonderful, Wager, Foster, Elberta, Hale's Hardy, Globe

Plums - Satsuma, Apricot, German Prune, Lombard, Mooer's Arctic, Coe's Golden Drop, Shipper's Pride, Niagara, Abundance

Cherries - Ostheim, Schmidth's Bigarreau, Gov. Wood, Early Richmond, Black Tartarian

Pears - Vermont Beauty, Duchess d'Angouleme, Bartlett, Idaho, Seckel, Beurre d'Anjou, Clapp's Favorite, Kieffer's Hybrid

Apples - Transcendent, Whitney's Seedling No. 20, Yellow Transparent, Wolf River, Belle de Boskoop, Red Beitigheimer, Wealthy, Duchess of Oldenburg, Famuese or Snow, Mann, Gideon, McIntosh Red

In the mid-19th century a “horticulture craze” took hold in America, particularly in the Upper Midwest. Although a boon for nurserymen and seed distributors, it also became a target for conmen, with complaints ranging from non-delivery of ordered products to inferior or misrepresented plants to inappropriate stock for a particular region. To attempt to gain some respectability back, many nursery owners recruited and trained salesmen to represent their stock throughout the nation. This coincided with another craze – color plate illustration. D.M. Dewey in Rochester, NY is credited with being the first to bring the two together and begin producing color plates of fruits, flowers and other nursery stock that salesmen and store owners could show to potential customers. Dewey even printed a “training manual” for salesmen (1875), guiding them in what to show customers and how to entice them to purchase more than they originally intended (see Kabelac). For unclear reasons, Rochester became the “hub” of printing these wonderful color plates as more printers and booksellers took up the business, and the area boasted over half a dozen companies printing primarily, if not exclusively, these fruit and flower plates by the 1880s and 1890s.

The techniques of printing these varied from the standard hand-coloring of lithographic plates to a combination stencil and hand-detailing. Eventually multicolor lithography (chromolithography) was introduced. One plate in this volume suggests the next trend - it claims to be from a photograph. A number of examples of this art form were included in the Amon Carter Museum exhibit “Stamped with a National Character” (and William Reese’s accompanying book by the same title). Some printers offered large and small plates, the former for store counter displays, the latter for salesmen and even personal use. Other firms only offered one size. J.W. Thompson appears to have been one of the latter, offering the small plates for sales books (Kabelac). The plates weren’t cheap. Prices could run 35 cents or more each for large plates; ten to 15 cents each for small plates was not uncommon. Kabelac (1982) found ads for “cheap” books of 40 plates for $3.50; “regular” books of 70 plates sold for twice that – well over $100 today (according to some calculations), the price of a fancy “coffee table book.”

With the resurgence of interest in horticulture today, these plates have historical appeal – we see the tenacity of favorite varieties as well as those which have fallen out of favor or even gone extinct. And the brilliance of the color and simplicity of design of these plates insures their esthetic appeal today and into the future.

References:

D. M. Dewey, The Tree Agents' Private Guide: A Manual for the Successful Work in Canvassing for the Sale of Nursery Stock. (Rochester, N.Y., 1875).

Kabelac, Karl Sanford. Nineteenth-Century Rochester Fruit and Flower Plates in The University of Rochester Library Bulletin. (Vol.XXXV, 1982), pp.93-114.

Lyon-Jenness, Cheryl. "Planting a Seed: The Nineteenth-Century Horticultural Boom in America," Business History Review, Vol. 78, No. 3, Autumn 2004.

Reese, William S. Stamped with a National Character: Nineteenth Century American Color Plate Books. New York: The Grolier Club, 1999.

One page stuck in upper left corner to page before (Moore's Early grape stuck to Campbell's Early). Moore's page still attractive. Front hinge has been repaired. Spine nearly gone. Corners and edges of boards worn, as expected for a "working" book.