Album of pressed seaweed specimens. Wales, 1862-69.

Oblong folio (280 x 360 mm), original gilt-ruled half black calf over green pebbled cloth, the upper board stamped in gilt ‘SPECIES OF ALGAE / E. J. COOKE.’ (boards with some small stains and scuff marks); all edges gilt; moire endpapers; containing [94] pressed marine algae specimens pre-mounted on paper sheets, a high percentage with Cooke’s manuscript annotations supplying the scientific name of the specimen, often with a collection location (usually ‘Wales’) and a date (the earliest 1862, the latest 1869); Cooke mounted these sheets on the rectos of [64] leaves in the album); the majority of the specimens are very well preserved, with some occasional loss – inevitable in albums of this type – and the mounts are generally free from foxing.

The collecting and pressing of seaweed specimens as a common pastime began in Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century. In Britain it had become so popular by the mid-nineteenth century that the “seaweed craze” rivalled the public’s mania for pressed ferns and flowers.