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To celebrate the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum's 50th anniversary and the 100th anniversary of the Horticultural Research Center, Andersen Horticultural Library is mounting a summer exhibit entitled Discover Trees. Utilizing materials from the Library's special collections, it focuses on useful and unusual aspects of many of the trees that surround us in our landscapes.
Included in the exhibit and displayed in the library, are two recent acquisitions both titled with the latin word for wood, or forest, Silva or Silvae.
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Jacob George Strutt's Silva Britannica: or, Portraits of Forest Trees (1826) documents historic English trees in 50 etchings. The portraits are of tree species found in 19th century England. The library copy was previously owned for many years by the famed Olmsted firm in Boston. This beautiful work was a recent gift of Mrs. Barbara Kaerwer.
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The second work is a special edition of Silvae (2008) by Ben Verhoeven and Gaylord Schanilec produced by Midnight Paper Sales, a fine press located in Stockholm, Wisconsin. While preparing this work, they produced the following description of the large project:
"Twenty wooded acres surround Midnight Paper Sales in western Wisconsin. This book documents the journey of Ben Verhoeven and Gaylord Schanilec into the woods to create a work not only about these trees, but of these trees.
In all 24 species have been catalogued through image, historical anecdotes, and notes taken during the cutting, milling, engraving, and printing. The 53 images consist primarily of long grain and end grain specimens which have been taken from the property. In each case the image is manipulated through either color, impression, engraving, or some combination of the above to emphasize a certain characteristic of a species. The text varies as well from tree to tree, and in this project."
The exhibit includes not only this unique work but also a display on the process of making such a work. Silvae was purchased through a generous gift of The Andersen Foundation in celebration of their 50th anniversary.
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The Discover Trees exhibit will run from April 28 to October 12, 2008, and can be viewed during library hours. The exhibit begins at the walkway entrance to the Snyder Building, continues to the Snyder Building Lobby, and culminates in the Andersen Horticultural Library.
Unless otherwise noted all materials are from the collection of the Andersen Horticultural Library. Most major works are gifts of the late Governor and Mrs. Elmer L. Andersen.
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