THE MAGAZINE SUMMER 2011 - PrivatAir

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Rhododendron basilicum
by Lizzie Sanders.
Right: Jasminum nudifl orum
by Mieko Ishikawa
‘It is rare to find books which
have been given such love and
devotion from st art to finish by
traditional craftsmen’
are for sale at £12,950 per set. (About 30 are
still available). Th e Prince, who wrote the
preface and holds set 1 of 175, has signed
each numbered set. All royalties from Th e
Highgrove Florilegium are donated to the
Prince’s Charities Foundation. Th e
painstaking production involved gardeners,
botanists, artists, typographers, leather dyers,
marblers, printers, binders and felters, and it
took over six months of their combined
eff orts to print, bind and fi nish each book.
Instead of the standard four-colour process
used in nearly all printing, the Florilegium
makes use of eight basic inks plus special
colours; it is hugely costly. Also heavy. Th e
two volumes together weigh about 25kg and
are more than two feet tall and one and a
half feet wide.
Henrietta Pearson of Addison
Publications, who pride themselves on
producing ‘slow books’ in the spirit of the slow
food movement, comments: ‘In this
throwaway, digital age, it is increasingly rare to
fi nd books which have been given such love
and devotion from start to fi nish by traditional
craftsmen. We are proud to be able to use the
best of Britain’s traditional book craftsmen to
produce our publications at a time when the
talk is more of e-books than embossing.’
Th e Highgrove Florilegium is the latest of
several titles that boast the same painstaking
process to create limited editions of
important, rare and sometimes ancient
manuscripts. Addison’s books, which include
Th e Book of Kells and Th e Lindisfarne Gospels
are now collectors’ items in their own right,
PRIVATBOOK
Nineteen