This is No 6 of the sponsors' edition limited to six copies of Denzil Carr's modern (1988) and authoritative monograph on Southern Africa's second most numerous family of trees and shrubs - the combretums.
This is the last available and mint copy of the six - the others being the author's copy, one each in Berlin and Cape Town (in the Special Collection of the National Botanical Gardens, Kirstenbosch) and two in Johannesburg.
The six sponsors' copies were half bound by Peter Carstens of Johannesburg in different colours of goatskin (this is the maroon copy) and matching marbled paper, with gilt lettering to the spines of the book itself and the quarter-bound solander case in the same materials in which the book is presented and preserved. The sections are hand-sewn into five raised spine bands and head and tail bands. The top edge is gilt. The outer endpapers are single-sided colour leaves augmented by three leaves of plain endpapers front and back. The text pages of this edition are printed on heavy Hahnemuehle acid-free laid paper from Germany.
Denzil Carr was an engineer by profession and a botanist by inclination, and before his book on the Combretaceae he authored the standard and now scarce book on the Southern African acacias. As well as the present limited edtion, the combretum book was published in standard and subscribers' editions.
As well as the frontispiece and 16 other full-page plates illustrated by Elise Buitendag, there are more than 300 photographs, distribution maps and other monochrome illustrations in the text.
This copy has been in the uninterrupted possession of the editorial and design partnership which produced the book for the Tree Society of Southern Africa; and it is in mint condition. The condition of the solander case, which, with the book it contains, has been carefully wrapped in between occasional viewings, and is close to mint.
This may be one of the finest examples of botanical book production to have appeared in South Africa in the past fifty years or more.
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