Steel & Roses: American Prints in the Hersh Cohen Collection & Botanical Books in the Fern Cohen Collection: American Prints, Botanical Books

This unique tête-bêche book (two titles, with a single spine) showcases the collections of Herschel and Fern Cohen. When reading in one direction, the reader is treated to stark black-and-white prints of cities and their inhabitants, with an emphasis on the Depression era, from the collection of Herschel Cohen; when reading in the other, the reader encounters gorgeously colored images from Fern Cohen’s collection of English, Continental, and American botanical books published from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. This is a rare opportunity to own a beautifully designed volume employing an ingenious and rarely used bookbinding technique. With forewords by each collector, the two catalogues reproduce a joint exhibition that took place at the Grolier Club in 2011.

A collector of rare botanical books, Fern Cohen is a retired teacher and school librarian. She is past president of the Port Washington Library Foundation and the Sands Point Garden Club.