Originally published in parts in the years 1804-12, George Brookshaw’s Pomona Britannica contains 90 colour-printed and hand finished aquatint and stipple-engraved plates of fruits then cultivated in Britain (pineapple pictured right).
Sold for a record $130,000 (£99,235) in an Arader Galleries (22% buyer’s premium) sale of October 28 was a copy in a handsome contemporary binding of crimson morocco gilt.
Until quite recent times little was known about Brookshaw, but in a 1991 issue of the arts magazine Apollo there appeared an intriguingly titled article by Lucy Wood, ‘The Case of the Vanishing Cabinet-Maker’.