Source Of The Images Used On USPS "Botanical Art" Stamps

On January 29, 2016, the United States Postal Service issued "Botanical Art" stamps, depicting highly-idealized paintings of flowers taken from nursery catalogs of over a hundred years ago. These are not only beautiful but fascinating, in that they indicate the aesthetics of the day — what the ideal of perfection was thought to be.




I had an idea for a series of first day covers in which I would use botanical illustrations of each plant as a cachet, but the information from the USPS was woefully incomplete:

"Depicted on the stamps, top row from left: corn lilies, tulips, stocks, roses and petunias. Pictured bottom row from left: tulips, dahlias, japanese Iris, tulips and daffodils and jonquils."

Those vernacular names do not map directly to species, and especially not to the cultivars that were being advertised. I read through the art credits for the stamps and saw that they were taken from nursery catalogs held by the Mertz Library at the New York Botanical Garden, which boasts the largest collection of such catalogs in the world.

So, I sent the library an email, asking if they could help me identify the plants. But the Public Services Librarian did far more than that. She sent me a spreadsheet with the following columns:

1. The nursery that issued the catalog
2. The title of the publication
3. The year (and season, if applicable) of the catalog from which the stamp images were taken
4. The name given for the flower in the catalog
5. And, for each, either one or two links: a digitized copy of the catalog in the archives of the Biodiversity Heritage Library, or a digitized copy in the archives of the Mertz Library!

Oh, and just to go entirely above-and-beyond, the spreadsheet rows were arranged in the order the stamps appear in the booklet.

I thought I would pass along this information to anyone else who might be interested. Each of the links below will take you to a digitized copy of the catalog from which the stamp image was sourced.

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Nursery: John Lewis Childs
Title: Catalogue of Bulbs and Plants
Issue: Fall 1891
Flowers pictured: ixias
http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/re...oll8/id/3226

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Nursery: John Lewis Childs
Title: Childs' Fall Catalogue of Bulbs, Plants & Seeds
Issue: 1897
Flowers pictured: tulips
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/44290234
http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/re...oll8/id/3290

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Nursery: Dreer
Title: Dreer's Garden Book : Seventy-Fourth Annual Edition 1912
Issue: 1912
Flowers pictured: gilliflowers
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42695545
http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/re...ll8/id/13108

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Nursery: Dreer
Title: Dreer's 72nd Annual Edition Garden Book : 1910.
Issue: 1910
Flowers pictured: roses
http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/re...ll8/id/15407

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Nursery: Dreer
Title: Dreer's Garden Calendar : 1898
Issue: 1898
Flowers pictured: fringed petunias
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/43827887

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Nursery: Dreer
Title: Dreer's Autumn Catalogue 1907
Issue: 1907
Flowers pictured: tulips
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42720886

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Nursery: Farquhar, R. & J. Company
Title: Farquhar's 1910 Garden Annual
Issue: Spring 1910
Flowers pictured: dahlias
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42231623
http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/re...ll8/id/26972

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Nursery: Dreer
Title: Dreer's Garden Book : Seventy-Fourth Annual Edition 1912
Issue: 1912
Flowers pictured: Japanese irises
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42695717
http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/re...ll8/id/13279

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Nursery: Dreer
Title: Dreer's Autumn 1901 Catalogue
Issue: 1901
Flowers pictured: tulips
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42696550

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Nursery: Dreer
Title: Dreer's Autumn Catalogue : 1899 Bulbs, Plants, Seeds, etc.
Issue: 1899
Flowers pictured: narcissus
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42696608

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(I originally wrote this post for collectpostmarks.com, but thought it would be of interest to members of this community.)

Not my collecting interest, but I admire what you've done here. Great work, and I'm sure others will appreciate it too.

Great work!

Awesome job! I think these will be my favorites of the stamps released this year.


-MV

@mcgeesorg: Thank you so much! This is a very helpful reference.

blcjr, KGB, MeadowviewCollector, and gabriella77us: Thanks for the kind words!

I sent away for five sets of first-day cancellations today:


(See larger image)




I hope they come back with clear cancels!