1848 Rare Floriography Book - The Flower Vase Containing the Language of Flowers

An exceptionally charming 1848 American “language of flowers” volume, combining floral symbolism, poetry, and botanical descriptions, complete with its delicate hand-colored floral frontispiece and attractive gilt-decorated publisher’s binding.

Author: S. C. Edgarton.
Title: The Flower Vase; Containing the Language of Flowers and Their Poetic Sentiments.
Publisher: Lowell: Merrill and Heywood, 1848.
Edition: 1848 edition. Copyright originally entered in 1843 by A. C. Bagley. 
Language: English.
Pages: iv, 157 pages.
Size: 4.5 x 3 inches.
Binding: Very good original brown publisher’s cloth binding, elaborately blind-stamped to both boards, with a charming gilt figure of a young woman carrying flowers to the front cover and richly gilt floral decoration and title to the spine. All edges gilt. Light rubbing and age-related wear, particularly to the spine extremities and corners, but remarkably attractive and well preserved overall, as shown. Protected in a removable mylar cover. 
Content: Very good content, clean, complete and well preserved, with only light age toning and occasional minor spotting. Each flower is accompanied by its botanical identification, symbolic meaning, and an associated poetic sentiment, with decorative typographical ornaments throughout. Complete with the concluding alphabetical Index of Flowers.
Illustrations: Complete with the beautiful hand-colored floral frontispiece depicting a bouquet arranged in an ornamental vase, retaining its original tissue guard. Decorative typographical ornaments throughout.

Estimate: USD $225–250.

The book: The Flower Vase belongs to the highly popular nineteenth-century tradition of floriography, or the “language of flowers,” in which individual flowers were assigned meanings that allowed bouquets to communicate sentiments that might otherwise remain unspoken. Here the amaranth signifies immortality, the iris “a message,” the pine “time and faith,” the verbena sensibility, the violet faithfulness, and the zinnia the melancholy sentiment “I mourn your absence.”

Far more than a simple floral dictionary, the book combines brief botanical descriptions with verse written or selected to embody each flower’s symbolic association. The result is a particularly evocative example of antebellum American gift-book culture, where botany, poetry, sentiment and courtship converged. Its miniature format, gilt binding and colored frontispiece make this an especially appealing survival.

The author: S. C. Edgarton was an American nineteenth-century writer associated with the literary and gift-book culture that flourished in New England during the 1830s and 1840s. In The Flower Vase, she gathered floral symbolism together with original and selected poetry, deliberately presenting the subject in a compact and affordable form for a broad readership.

Her treatment reflects the period’s fascination with assigning emotional and moral meanings to the natural world. By pairing individual flowers with sentiments such as constancy, remembrance, affection, sorrow and hope, Edgarton created a book intended as much for private reflection and gift-giving as for botanical reference.