Indian Botanical Art: An Illustrated History

great book, excellent quality, good illustrations and information about indian flora

The illustrations are stunning, and the botanical illustration plates are beautifully and clearly reproduced. The paper is a heavy weight, and feels luxurious, smooth, and is semi gloss. The cover is matte, but has slightly raised areas of glossy details. The endpapers are of fairly thin weight given the heft of the signature pages. They are single sided prints, with the pastedown and recto (front) of the flyleaf an underwhelming solid pink-leaning-coral color, and the flyleaf verso (back) being plain bright white (reversed for back endpapers). I haven't actually read the text (yet), so I can't speak on the merits of the written word.The pages in the signature are sewn through the fold, then glued to a piece of cardboard that isn't actually attached to the bookboard. Faux headbands have been glued on.Upon opening the box it came in, I was very gently doing a cursory flip through the pages. I wasn't creasing them or applying any pressure to try to get them to lay flat. I was literally "thumbing through" the pages. I got to the middle of the book and I heard a loud "CRACK" that was the glue snapping. One whole signature is now hanging by a thread to the binding.The book now has large gaps on either side of the signature where it's pulled away. When closed, this broken binding is very visible at the spine edge, and the entire signature is pushed out of alignment, so very visible on the fore edge (part opposite the spine). See attached pictures for details.Given this was printed in 2021, I'm wondering if they used thousand year old glue??!? But then again, I have 150-year-old books that have better bindings than this. Very disappointed in the quality of what could have been an absolutely stunning book, which was destroyed by feather light turning of pages within 3 minutes of receiving this.

A different angle to the history of botany. Love this title from Roli.

beautiful drawings

Highly recommended for those who like Botanical art. Get it!