Subscribers' Edition, limited to 600 copies. of which this is number 200. It has been signed by Cythna Letty, the artist, and John Voelcker, the Chairman of the board of trustees.
xiii + 362pp. Colour illustrations in profusion. Bound in quarter leather with gold gilt. The spine is a little faded and there is one Department of Agriculture Library stamp on the title verso page and a date page and index card holder on the inside back cover. No other library stamps or paraphernalia. No other inscriptions and the binding is excellent. internally the book is clean and very attractive. Text by R.A. Dyer, Inez C Verdoorn and LE. Codd of the Division of Botany, Department of Agricultural Technical Services. There is an introduction by H. Bolus of the Bolus Herbarium in Cape Town.
Cythna Letty (Cythna Lindenberg Forssman) was one of South Africa’s most distinguished and prolific botanical arists. In her obituary, LE Codd writes that this volume - Wild Flowers of the Transvaal - which includes 174 colour plates and numerous line drawings was realisation of one of her greatest ambitions. She also completed over 740 plates for Flowering Plants of Africa.
Volume 30 (1945) of Flowering Plants of Africa was dedicated to her ‘in grateful recognition of her signal service to South African botany and the art of botanical illustration’, but general acknowledgement of her merit came to her only late in life. In 1966 she visited Europe and the United States for the first time when some of her paintings were included in an international exhibition of botanical art held at the Hunt Botanical Institute, Pittsburgh. She repeated the visit in 1970 when she received the Grenfell Silver Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society for an exhibit in London of her paintings of Transvaal wild flowers. In 1974 the University of the Witwatersrand bestowed on her an honorary Ll.D. degree in appreciation of ‘a lifetime devoted to superb craftsmanship that has assisted our scientific advance and given joy to so many here and abroad’. In the same year the Johannesburg newspaper The Star named her ‘Woman of the Year’.
Codd, L. E. Obituary: Cythna Lindenberg Letty (1895-1985). Bothalia, 1986, Vol. 1
- Binding Condition: Very good
- Overall Condition: Very good
- Size: 4to (275 x 210 x 40 mm)
