Quartermaine Hall

Artisan: Ken Blythe
Date: Unknown
Intended Room: Library
Dimensions: TBC
Inventory number: 2022.214

Provenance: Purchased from the artist’s daughter and son-in-law, who run The Little Book Company, via eBay, in June 2022.

I haven’t yet tracked down the original version of this herbal but I presume it dates from either the very end of the 16th century or the beginning of the 17th century. Ken Blythe’s miniature reproduces the lovely heavy text and the coloured woodcut images that illustrate the work, although with its beautiful patterned vellum binding. By the 1890s this book would no longer have had any scientific function, having been long outdated by modern botany, but it would have gained new value as a precious incunabula.