lately a friend who is a groovy nurseryman told me about the Garden State Heirloom Seed Society , and its internet site , www.historyyoucaneat.org . accord to its founders , the website is dedicate , to “ New Jersey heirloom fruits and vegetables , and their culinary , medicinal , and diachronic note value , to food and history - lovers around the orb . The site is fascinating . An essay write by Joseph Cavanaugh , the Society ’s founder , on Peter Henderson & Company , a New York - base seed purveyor that operated from 1871 until the early 1950 ’s especially intrigued me . Founded by Peter Henderson , a New Jerseyan , the company maintained seed farms in Red Bank and Teaneck . The Cavanaugh piece was accompanied by a photo of a Henderson catalog cover , and facsimiles of some privileged pages .
The Henderson cover is typical of everything that I bed about sometime seed and garden catalogue . The colourful drawing features nine or ten voluptuous rose wine , fully opened and most spring off the page . The only text is the troupe ’s name at the bottom right . The roses speak , or blab , or shout , for themselves . In his essay , Joseph Cavanaugh say , “ Most seed catalogue collectors would agree that Henderson ’s catalogs have no equal to this twenty-four hour period . ”
It is not surprising that onetime cum catalogs have become sought - after collectable . The illustrations are often lovely renderings of fruit and vegetables , but but they also say something about the land of America during the age when the catalogue were supply . Right now the trend for these quondam - fashioned images is so strong that the revered Burpee seed company has print an antique - style catalog to showcase its Burpee Heirlooms seed aggregation . The Burpee Heirloom seminal fluid packets are breeding of recent nineteenth and former twentieth century originals .
Around the turn of the last century there were century of modest and with child seed companies doing business all over the United States . One of them , Farmer Seed Company of Faribault , Minnesota , come out a catalog for Spring 1906 sport a romantic illustration of a rustic farmer with a seed satchel over one shoulder , striding through a plowed field of battle , strewing his germ . The picture is garlanded with pink clover and straw stalks . Clearly the creative person depicted a bucolic nonpareil rather than a rural reality , but the natural covering made the enactment of planting seem both noble and picturesque .
The same year , D.M. Ferry & Company , located in the urban mecca of Detroit , Michegan , issued a catalog with a distinctly different flavor . The cover features a colorful display of fancy pansies in the foreground , and a large domed construction in the background knowledge . The social organisation remind me strongly of the Lord & Burnham conservatory at the New York Botanical Garden in The Bronx and Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania . Developments in engineering in the former Victorian era made such wonder of glass and sword potential , and garden aficionados and Apostle of progress in all its form get it on to show them off . come seller were no exclusion .
Another Henderson catalogue , for Spring 1913 , shows a portion of an landed estate garden , consummate with a parterre full of clip loge hedges enclosing openhanded rose bushes . Though the well - slaked prosperous Edwardian era was already gone , the depiction fancy an image of civility and sophistication . It is a reality by from the toiling husbandman of the 1906 Farmer catalogue .
in all probability my favorite cover illustration embellish the 1901 Burpee catalog . Three plump Cupid float through the dark heavens with the top of planet Earth seeable below . Joined by a red ribbon that scrolls across their pink bodies , the cupids are hold up a tray laden with a rich categorisation of perfect fruit and vegetables . Perhaps the theme was “ celestial produce for a new century . ” Whatever the contents , the cover is so sentimental it could almost pass for a Valentine ’s Day lineup .
These days , of course , photography has displaced artists ’ renderings on most catalog cover . The fruits , vegetable and flowers are just as big and perfect ( especially the dahlias and tomatoes ) , and twice as calendered , but less idealized . There are still a few catalog , however , that harken back to earlier times . The Cook ’s Garden of Londonderry , Vermont uses wood block that evoke the rural life to illustrate their catalogs . Select Seeds , a purveyor of passe flower seeds and plants , has a photograph on its most recent catalog cover , but the combining of photo and botanic illustration inside the record book reinforces the previous fashioned nature of the product .
I question when someone will rediscover cupids ?
For those with an interest group in ensure or examine old seed catalogs , the LuEsther Mertz Library at the New York Botanical Garden has an tremendous collection . Cornell University also have a declamatory number of catalogs . The occasional stray catalog or passe seed package may even be lurking in the dark corner of an outmoded shop near you . For more information about the Garden State Heirloom Seed Society , visit the internet site or contact Joe and Roberta Cavanaugh at PO Box 15 , Delaware , New Jersey 07833 ; tel . ( 908 ) 475 - 4861 .
Contact Elisabeth Ginsburg
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