DURANDE Jean François Notions élémentaires de Botanique. [Et:] Flore de Bourgogne ou catalogue des plantes naturelles à cette Province, & de celles qu’on y cultive le plus communément, avec l’indication du sol où elles croissent, du temps de leur floraison, & de la couleur de leurs fleurs.

Stafleu-Cowan, 1596 & 1597 (without the wall chart).

First editions.

Jean-François Durande was a French physician and botanist, born in 1732 in Dijon and died in January 1794 in the same city. While practicing medicine, his passion for flora led him to become a professor of botany (1776-1789), teaching in the city’s botanical garden. Among Durande’s students were Louis-Augustin Bosc d’Antic (1759-1828), Jacques-Nicolas Vallot (1771-1860), and Pierre Morland (1768-1837).

Together with Hugues Maret (1726-1786) and Louis-Bernard Guyton-Morveau (1737-1816), he first published Éléments de chymie théorique et pratique (Elements of Theoretical and Practical Chemistry) (1778). He then compiled his lessons in Notions élémentaires de botaniques (1781), in which he was one of the first to follow the system of Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu (1748-1836). The following year, he published his Flore de Bourgogne (1782), in which he described 1,300 local species.

unique copies, printed on large paper (according to the note on the front flyleaf of each title).

Flore de Bourgogne is decorated with a vignette of an apple and a pear engraved on the front title page, and the other with military emblems, engraved banners, and tailpieces. Volume I is subtitled Catalogue des plantes naturelles à cette province (Catalogue of plants native to this province), while volume II is subtitled Flore de Bourgogne ou propriétés des plantes de cette province, relativement à la médecine, à l’agriculture & aux arts (Flora of Burgundy or properties of the plants of this province, relating to medicine, agriculture, and the arts).

Exceptional copies

Each of these two titles is the only copy printed on large paper for the personal use of the printer Frantin. They are accompanied by the extremely rare engraved wallchart entitled Carte Botanique.

This chart, entirely engraved, is printed from seven plates to form a very large wall map (1538 x 1498 mm), intended for teaching students.

It is kept in a large slipcase. This map was not part of the edition, and it seems that only a very small number were printed. A detailed description of the usefulness of this map can be found in the Éléméns de botanique, where it occupies pages 302 to 368. It is extremely rare.

Provenance: handwritten note in black ink on a flyleaf: “This copy is the only one that Mr. Frantin, the printer, printed on large paper for himself; the others have much smaller margins. It was sold to me by Frantin’s son after his father’s death, bound in paperback.”

Magnificent copies uniformly bound at the time.