Földvári Books

Nature-Printed Lepidoptera — Denton’s As Nature Shows Them in the Rare Original Fascicles

Denton, Sherman Foote

[Cover title:] As Nature Shows Them. Moths and Butterflies of the United States East of the Rocky Mountains. By S. F. Denton. (In Eight Sections. Section One[–Eight]).

Boston: Bradlee Whidden, 1898–1899. With 56 leaves of mounted colored nature-printed plates (generally two insects per plate), and approximately 400 illustrations in the text. First edition, limited issue, one of 500 numbered copies. Preliminary matter issued with the final fascicle. Complete set in the original 8 fascicles, each in the publisher’s brown hardpaper bindings, as issued. [Complete.]. Publisher’s errata and cancel notices for Sections II and III retained, with the replacement plate and reprinted leaves present; ephemeral issue material often lacking. Bindings showing some creasing and handling wear; several text blocks partially detached from the covers. Most plates loose, each preserved with protective tissue guards. Overall complete and sound.

Original fascicle issue of Denton’s celebrated butterfly and moth survey, complete with the remarkable nature-printed plates produced from actual wing scales.

Denton’s As Nature Shows Them is a richly illustrated survey of butterflies and moths found in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, combining descriptive text with an extensive visual program intended to reproduce the insects with unusual fidelity. The work ranks among the more technically ambitious American natural history publications of the period.

The plates employ an advanced form of lepidochromy, a late nineteenth-century nature-printing process in which the microscopic scales from actual butterfly and moth wings were transferred directly onto a prepared paper surface, preserving much of the insects’ original coloration and surface effect. Because many Lepidoptera derive their appearance from both pigment and structural light interactions within the scale microstructure, the impressions retain optical qualities not achievable through conventional color printing. In Denton’s method the wing transfers provide the colored image, while the bodies, antennae, and legs were printed from engraved blocks and finished by hand. Denton noted the labor involved, stating that he executed tens of thousands of transfers for the edition.

Sherman Foote Denton (1856–1937) was an American naturalist, scientific illustrator, and entrepreneur. Closely associated with the Denton Brothers enterprise, he developed and promoted specimen-mounting and nature-printing techniques that combined commercial production with close observational study. His work for the U.S. Fish Commission and his activities in the natural history trade informed the experimental approach that culminated in the present publication.

The work was issued in parts between 1898 and 1899 and in 1900 commonly encountered bound in two volumes. Sets preserved in the original fascicles, as here, are distinctly less common and document the publication in its primary commercial form. The preliminary texts were supplied only with the final fascicle, as in the present example. The book illustrates species of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains and includes extensive in-text figures in addition to the mounted plates.

Collation of the Fascicles:

1. pp. 1–48; pls. [1]–[6]; figs. (1898)

2. pp. 49–96; pls. [7]–[12]; figs. (1898); with publisher’s errata notice and replacement plate for pp. 65–66

3. pp. 97–144; pls. [13]–[18]; figs. (June 1898); with publisher’s notice and replacement leaves for pp. 139–142

4. pp. 145–192; pls. [19]–[25]; figs. (Sept. 1898)

5. pp. 193–240; pls. [26]–[31]; figs. (Dec. 1898)

6. pp. 241–288; pls. [32]–[39]; figs. (Mar. 1899)

7. pp. 289–336; pls. [40]–[48]; figs. (Sept. 1899)

8. pp. 337–361, [3]; prelims. [5] vi–x, [6]; [7] viii–xiv, [2]; pls. [49]–[56] (Dec. 1899)

References: Nissen ZBI 1079; Reese, “Nineteenth Century American Color Plate Books” 107.

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Price: €6,000.00