Victorian Leather Bound Board Album of Twenty-Eight Watercolours Depicting Various Types of Fungi

An Unusual Victorian Leather Bound Board Album of Twenty-Eight Watercolours Depicting Various Types of Fungi Found in Britain
Some with their Latin names in pencil
Inscribed inside the cover ‘Fanny Matthews 1858’
Mid 19th Century

Size: 13cm high, 21.5cm wide - 5 ins high, 8½ ins wide
 
An Unusual Victorian Leather Bound Board Album of Twenty-Eight Watercolours Depicting Various Types of Fungi Found in Britain
Some with their Latin names in pencil
Inscribed inside the cover ‘Fanny Matthews 1858’
Mid 19th Century

Size: 13cm high, 21.5cm wide - 5 ins high, 8½ ins wide
 
There is something special about roaming the woods and fields in search of fungi. It is difficult to define the magic, but having first mastered the rudiments of sorting ‘Boletus’ from ‘Amanita’ and the essentials of sniffing, tasting and spitting, one quickly becomes a seasoned ‘Mycophile’. Fungi possess their own intrinsic lure, they are esoteric in every way and have the most extraordinary shapes, colours, textures and aromas. Searching them out generates its own peculiar compulsion which until you have been hooked by it is difficult to comprehend.
     Present day knowledge of British fungi owes a great deal to the painstaking careful observation of the Victorian botanists, although the ancient Romans passion for eating fungi has never been lost to the Mediterranean appetite. Fungi are not traditional fare in Britain and they are seen as objects of mystery, superstition and evil purpose. The British will happily select sloes and blackberries from the hedgerow, but will only eat suitably clean, cellophane wrapped mushrooms. Much more exciting to find, pick and cook them foraged from the wild, and as long as you can identify accurately what you are gathering you are perfectly safe.
Ex Private English collection

Victorian Leather Bound Board Album of Twenty-Eight Watercolours Depicting Various Types of Fungi

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+44 (0)7836 684133

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ENQUIRIES

+44 (0)7768 236921
+44 (0)7836 684133

enquiries@finch-and-co.co.uk