africa

This type of book, an illustrated flora, is an example of the core collection of worldwide floras the Botany and Horticulture Library has in its 100,000 plus volume collection. Floras are limited-print scientific texts used by botanists throughout the world for plant identification and to answer botanical nomenclature questions. This book describes 600 plants, their characteristics, and medicinal effects. Additionally, it shows 117 plants with black and white illustrations. The author is a scientist and as well as a botanical artist.

Zélie Isabelle Colville (1864-1930) was an aristocratic, class-conscious, sheltered woman of her time and place. Accompanied by her husband Major-General Henry E. Colville, she circumnavigated Africa. The trip was marked by hardship, sickness, even danger, but as her husband wrote, “If she is as good at writing as she is at roughing it, we have a treat before us.” Indeed! She describes Africans and Europeans—their clothing and manner, with a close eye for the personal detail and a tolerant sense of humor.

Marie Cuttoli (1879-1973) was a collector and patron of modern French art. Additionally, she was responsible for reviving the art of tapestry weaving and carpet making in the modern era and the practice of commissioning tapestries to reproduce paintings, as had been a custom during the Renaissance. She commissioned designs from modern—especially Cubist—painters Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso.

Charles Alphonse Combes (1891-1968), born in Paris, moved to the Côte d’Ivoire in 1925 and never looked back. He began taking art students and in 1937 his studio became the École des Arts Appliques, the first art school in the country. It is now a museum in Abidjan, Musée Charles Alphonse Combes.

Verney Lovett Cameron (1844-1894), author of this account, was the first European to cross Equatorial Africa, coast to coast and mostly on foot. His original mission was to search for the missing explorer David Livingstone, but soon after leaving Zanzibar (an island off Africa’s east coast) early in 1873, he learned that the great man had died.

Verney Lovett Cameron (1844-1894), author of this book, was the first European to cross Equatorial Africa, coast to coast and mostly on foot.  His original mission was to search for the missing explorer David Livingstone, but soon after leaving Zanzibar (an island off Africa’s east coast) early in 1873, he learned that the great man had died.

Ronald Cohen, architect and artist, was born in South Africa and later moved to London where he succeeded as an interior designer. On holidays, he traveled and painted widely in Europe, South America, the Middle East, and Africa, always drawn to different varieties of architecture.  “But then I discovered Cape Town,” he wrote, “and there I found absolutely everything to delight my senses—the wonderful clarity of the light, the expansive golden beaches, the granite rocks and the sparkling sea . . .

Chokwe (an ethnic group from central and southern Africa) murals are among the best known and most thoroughly documented in Central Africa. These designs painted on the outer clay walls of their houses were community works by both adults and children. The murals reproduced here are replicas based on the José Redinha’s photographs and watercolors.

In 1870, Alvan Southworth, ever in pursuit of stirring adventure, went to Egypt as a correspondent for the New York Herald to report on the lavish court of its ruler, Ismail Pasha, and to investigate the upper reaches of the Nile. He soon realized there was a larger story: the state-sanctioned slave trade in Egypt’s territory of Sudan.

In 1897, an unauthorized party of 250 British merchants and African soldiers disguised as porters approached the powerful city of Benin, located in what is now southern Nigeria, intending to overthrow its king and reestablish a once lucrative trade outpost. They were ambushed en route, only two men survived. In revenge, the British sent a punitive expedition to Benin which destroyed the city.

Léo Dex was the pseudonym of the brillant and distinguished aeronautical engineer Edouard-Léopold-Joseph Deburaux, who was commander of a company of hot-air balloonists attached to the French Army’s First Corps of Engineers. Under his given name, he wrote many books and papers on the possible uses of hot-air balloons for exploration and warfare. His grand experiment in balloon exploration—sending hot-air balloons across the Sahara from Tunisia to the region of Timbuktu—ended in failure, and he died shortly thereafter.

In 2015, media outlets were abuzz with the news of the discovery of a sunken slave ship near the coast of South Africa. The Portuguese slave ship Sao José Paquete de Africa (often shortened to Sao José) began its journey in 1794 from Mozambique, heading to the cotton and rice plantations of Brazil with a cargo of roughly 500 African captives. The ship never reached its destination—as it rounded the Cape of Good Hope, it was ripped apart by high winds and sank just off the coast. Although the crew survived, 212 of the slaves drowned.

Nzima Land was a small, independent state located in the southwest corner of the Gold Coast (now Ghana). Annor Adjaye, a Nzima Paramount Chief, was educated in Britain and understood how the British viewed Ghanaian society. In this book, he attempts to educate British readers about his society and people, and to dispel prejudices and misconceptions. To bridge this cultural divide, Adjaye explains the workings of Nzima government and tribunal judgments, and he shares the wisdom of Fante proverbs.

The British Punitive Expedition against the Kingdom of Benin in 1897 spawned an outpouring of curiosity about this African kingdom, its stunning bronze sculpture (confiscated booty), and its tyrannical king. H. Long Roth’s Great Benin is one of the classic pieces of literature written about Benin. It is not a product of direct observation—the author never traveled in West Africa—but rather of careful research on eyewitness accounts and museum collections.

This 500-page book is a collection of round postal markings (postmarks) stamped on envelopes, from the Gold Coast region of Africa (modern-day Ghana). The author places these items of philatelic history in the context of the overall history of the region, from the first visit by Portuguese explorers in 1471, through the Republic of Ghana's achievement of independence from British colonial rule in 1957.

This book traces the history of postal services in the Gold Coast region of Africa (modern-day Ghana) from the European "discovery" of the region in 1471, to the end of the Ashanti War in 1901. The book includes beautiful color illustrations of "cancelled covers" (envelopes) throughout.

Africa is rising—fashion, design, wax prints redeux, eco-architecture, floating schools, hammocks in libraries, AK-47s into chairs,  popular culture, récupération, safari lodges, curated dining, LGBT haute couture, Afronauts, sapeurs—where art and design and popular culture collide. Today’s African designers share an unflinching reverence for the past and draw smartly on that heritage in the novelty of their creations. This is not your Africa of yore.

Legend has it that in 1803 at St. Simons Island, Georgia, a group of 75 Igbo warriors from what is now Nigeria committed mass suicide by drowning rather than begin life in America as slaves. They survived the Middle Passage only to walk willingly into the sea wearing chains. A private land dispute prevents a memorial from being built at the site where this happened. This book was edited by Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Nation. This book features beautiful color paintings of Gullah life and history.