From Flower to Fruit

Hardbound, moss dark green cloth boards with debossed flower image to front board (sturdy library edition). Boards are in very nice condition with only the very slightest wear at the top and bottom of the back strip. Boards show no other wear or blemishes and corners are sharp with the tiniest touch of wear at each corner. Spine is straight with no cracking to the endpapers. Text block is solid with all pages firmly attached to the stitched binding; the binding is so tight the book may not have ever been read. Ex-library markings include: library stamp and black mark to front free endpaper, blue ink pen date on introductory page, library stamp on page 21 and on the rear endpaper. Beautiful full page and intext color illustrations as well as black and white intext illustrations. All interior pages are clean with no tears, cracks, or other previous owner marks except where noted. 56 pages plus index

Anne Ophelia Todd Dowden (1907 – 2007) was a renowned and popular botanical artist that was recognized for the anatomical accuracy and the beauty of her paintings. She used only living specimens for models and kept extensive collections of preserved flowers and insects, producing elegant detailed images of flowers, insects, herbs, and flowers. Her career as a botanical illustrator resulted in more than 20 books, many for younger readers, although she was in her late 40's when regular freelance illustration commissions for magazines enabled her to quit teaching and become a full-time botanical illustrator. She was in her late 50's when she began publishing books.

Born in Denver, Colorado and raised in Boulder, as a teenager she made medical drawings for her father, head of pathology at the University of Colorado Medical School. In 1930 she was awarded a degree in Art from Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie-Mellon University), moving shortly after to New York. While as a young artist in New York she hoped to become a book illustrator she met with little success. Thus, for almost two decades she supported herself by teaching at the Pratt Institute and then at Manhattanville College, where she founded the art department. After 50 years in New York, in 1990 she moved back to Boulder, Colorado where she died at the age of 99.