Publications
The Garden
December 2003
The art of direct marketing
Beautiful catalogues appeared during the Edwardian craze for anything Japanese, as Brent Elliott reveals
Images: RHS Lindley Library 2003
One of the major fashions in English gardening 100 years ago was the Japanese style. Its manifestations ranged from the growing of Japanese irises to the hiring of Japanese garden designers.
The first major importer of Japanese plants into England was Colchester physician Alexander Wallace, first using the export firm of Teutschel and Company and later his own firm Wallace and Barr. The most successful exporter of plants from Japan was the Yokohama Nursery Company, founded in 1890 by father-and-son team Uhei and Hamakichi Suzuki. It appears to have been a conglomerate of small-scale nurseries in the Yokohama area; James Herbert Veitch, who travelled in Japan in 1892, wrote about a Gardeners’ Association there, and the company referred in its catalogues to ‘our stocks grown in Yokohama and local nurseries’. The firm issued English-language catalogues for the export market, both general-stock catalogues printed on European paper, and special limited-edition, themed catalogues (such as for maples, lilies 1, 3 or irises 2, 4), some of which were printed on rice paper.
It is not known how many copies of these catalogues were issued. Norman Gauntlett’s Japanese Nurseries, which moved in 1907 to Chiddingfold, Surrey, certainly retailed Yokohama Nursery Company stock.
As the firm’s fame increased, it opened its own branches overseas. Before 1914 it had offices in Shanghai, New York and London (Craven House, Kingsway). The firm exhibited at Chelsea Flower Show from 1916 - 39. As far as I can tell the last catalogue published from the London address was in 1934.
Brent Elliott is RHS Librarian and Archivist
The RHS Lindley Library holds more than 50,000 books, 1,500 periodicals, 25,000 botanical drawings, and the UK's largest collection of horticultural trade catalogues.
The works shown are held in the RHS Lindley Library and may be consulted at the London branch at 80 Vincent Square, London, SW1 and is open to the public Monday - Friday, 9.30am - 5.30pm.
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