Folding Apple Tree Book
Chromolithographs, Mid 19th Century

This item is sold.  It has been placed here in our online archives as a service for researchers and collectors.

Apple Tree Salesman's Sample Book
Apple Tree Salesman's Sample Book
Rochester Lithographing and Printing Co. and Vredenburg & Co.
Rochester, New York: Mid 19th Century
12 chromolithographs on paper, bound into accordion fold book
Print size: 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches each
Book size: 17 1/4 x 34 1/2 inches unfolded, 8 5/8 x 5 5/8 x 1/2 inch folded
Sold, please inquire as to the availability of similar items.

See also a similar Peach Tree Salesman's Sample Book.

This sample book would have been used by a traveling tree salesman employed by nurseries to sell apple trees to farmers. It consists of 12 colorful prints of larger-than-life size apples in vivid colors, with their names and brief advertising copy, such as, "An annual and abundant bearer; quality unsurpassed; valuable for market, where it always brings a high price. December to April." They are bound into an accordion-fold book with dark-green cloth covers that opens to display all 12. Apples in this set are: Bismarck, Opalescent, Stayman's Winesap, Sutton's Beauty, Rome Beauty, Yellow Bellflower, King, Winter Banana, Wolf River, Fameuse [illegible] Snow and Rhode Island Greening.

The twelve in this particular book were printed by one of two Rochester, New York, companies. From the 1850s, Rochester became a center for nursery gardening and a flourishing printing and illustration industry grew up to provide pictures of the flowers, trees and bushes for use as catalogues by nursery salesmen. They greatly resemble the folk art of their time, and were in fact produced via a process also used by folk and amateur artists--stencils were used by the illustrators to produce the basic shapes, with details added freehand. One can observe this directly by comparing the two illustrations of Opalescent apples in this catalogue, the second from top left and the far lower left prints.

In addition to being charming and decorative slices of Americana, catalogues such as these document agricultural history and the existence of varieties of fruits that are still familiar favorites as well as those that are no longer commonly grown, if not extinct.

References:

Kabelac, Karl Sanford. Nineteenth-Century Rochester Fruit and Flower Plates in The University of Rochester Library Bulletin. (vol.XXXV,1982), pp.93-114.

Raphael, Sandra. An Oak Spring Pomona. Upperville, Virginia: Oak Spring Garden Library, 1990. p. 65.

Reese, William S. Stamped with a National Character: Nineteenth Century American Color Plate Books. p. 72.