Perfection Currant antique print. D.G. Passmore lithograph c1904.

by Passmore, Deborah Grisscom

Antique print of Currants, by D.G. Passmore c1904.

Lovely original colour-printed lithograph by botanical artist Deborah Grisscom Passmore (1840-1911), printed in New York in 1904 by The Sackett and Wilhelms Lithography & Printing Company, for the Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture. Deborah Passmore received a strict Quaker education prior to moving from Delaware to study at the School of Design and Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.  She was a fine botanical artist who worked in the U.S.A. Division of Pomology for 19 years.

Between 1897 and 1920 Yearbooks were published to illustrate the wide range of fruit produced in the United States. From 1905 to 1925, the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station published a series of seven monographs on hardy fruits as part of their annual report.  Ulysses Prentiss Hedrick (1870-1951), continued the series over a period of 18 years, with larger photolithographs for six volumes on grapes, plums, cherries, peaches, pears and small fruits. As they were published essentially to promote the growing of fruit in the United States, there was not an enormous circulation, so these beautiful illustrations are rarely seen today.

23 x 14cm (9 x 5.5 inches).