Flowers of the Brazilian Forests

large folio [53 x 41 cm]; [72 l] pp, 32 fine colored plates, including frontis, from paintings by Mee, each with tissue guard, signed in the plate by Mee, dated 1960s, maps, list of plates, pictorial endpapers. original green morocco-backed boards, bound by Zaehnsdorf, boards with hand marbled paper, gilt spine title lettering & gilt vignette on front, top edge gilted, original clear glassine jacket, original cloth slipcase, clean, fine and bright copy. A pictur A superb production with most attractive plates, including nine of orchids and six of bromeliads, each plate with a descriptive leaf. Margaret Mee (1909-88) traveled to the Amazon area 15 times over a 32 year period, by canoe, on foot and often alone. Her paintings and sketches "could stand without shame in the high company of such masters as Georg Dionysius Ehret and Redoute" (Wilfred Blunt). Mee was a passionate conservationist and devoted her life to recording the diversity and beauty of the Amazon. She was one of the first to protest the destruction still taking place there. Sitwell in Great Flower Books describes her work as: 'exceptional and quite in the tradition of the great eighteenth-century books '. 'Mee's work is of an unusually high order of excellence and in the best tradition of flower painting' [Taylor, director of Royal Botanic Garden of Kew]. 'Mee was a talented botanical painter and intrepid traveller. . .an exceptional personality' [Oak Spring Flora]. One of the plants illustrated was discovered by Mee herself.