Hughes, John Arthur. Garden Architecture and Landscape Gardening Illustrating the Architectural Embellishment of Gardens, with Remarks on Landscape Gardening in its Relation to Architecture, by John Arthur Hughes.  London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1866.

Due to the nature of my summer schedule, I have not been able to post to Friday Finds as regularly as during the school year. And as I am out again tomorrow, I decided to bring you Friday Finds a day early.

This morning I pulled a rather unassuming book of the shelf.  The repairs to the spine obscured the title; I therefore knew not what it was, only that it was related to landscapes and gardens. On the inside cover, I discovered a rather amazing book plate, while the back end papers held a sketch of a pagoda. On the inside of the back cover is a list of sixteen names.

The book plate attributes former ownership to S. J. Hare and depicts the transformation of a hare into his signature (which is also stamped on the endpapers). When I searched for Hare, I discovered that Hare & Hare (Sydney J. Hare and S. Herbert Hare) were the landscape architects who worked on the design of campus. At this time, I cannot attribute the book with certainty to Sydney J. Hare.

The sketch of the pagoda is intriguing, because examples of such structures were not represented in the book. John Arthur Hughes provided drawings of garden follies that reflect picturesque, rustic, classical, Elizabethan, Georgian, and French styles.

If you follow the link in the citation to the catalog record, you will discover that a digitized copy of work has been made accessible. According to the book plate, the surrogate is from the University of Michigan.  While the electronic copy might provide ease of access, each book has the potential to hold unique surprises. Which is my way of saying, come in and explore the works held in APL’s Special Collections!