engraving of the copperplates (known from Audubon's 

 and Havell's records, but also engraved on most of the 

 plates), are extremely useful in determining the history 

 of some copies of the folio. 



The complete sets of those who subscribed to the 

 work at or near the beginning of publication contain 

 prints with watermarks that closely parallel the dates of 

 engraving of the copperplates. In such sets, prints from 

 copperplates engraved, for example, in 1830, will gener- 

 ally have watermarks dated 1830. The costs of producing 

 a work such as The Birds of America were great, and 

 Audubon and Havell could not afford to produce more 

 copies of the prints than were needed to supply the sub- 

 scribers on their list at any given time. From time to 

 time, however, throughout the twelve years of publica- 

 tion, Audubon and his friends and supporters found new 

 subscribers to the work. For these later subscribers a set 

 of those prints that had already been published was 

 newly printed off and colored. The copy of The Birds of 

 America originally belonging to an owner who began his 

 subscription in 1834, for example, after most of the first 

 200 prints had been issued, would be characterized by 

 watermarks of 1834 or later years on most of those first 

 200 prints. 



Many subscribers received their plates loose in the 

 numbers of five plates as these were issued, and were 

 responsible for having their own volumes bound. For 

 some subscribers Audubon had the volumes bound by 

 the London binder Hering. One such subscriber was 

 Euphemia Gifford. 



rries was originally led to the idea of the Gifford 

 provenance by a single piece of information: 

 the "ottoman" in which the Field Museum set 

 of The Birds of America was housed. This piece 

 of furniture was specially built to house the four volumes 

 of the folio. It is a rectangular case containing four draw- 

 ers for the four volumes of the copy, each of which pulls 

 out and opens up for viewing the plates. Fries was aware 

 of a single reference to such a piece of furniture in one of 

 Audubon's ledgers, indicating that Euphemia Gifford 

 had received an "ottoman" for her copy of the folio. It 

 was solely on the basis of this fact that Fries assumed that 

 the Field Museum copy and the original Gifford sub- 

 scription copy were the same. Bibliographic evidence 

 from the Field Museum copy and documentary evidence 



The "ottoman" with one of the four drawers pulled out and opened. Each volume was not only protectively housed within its drawer, but 

 could be viewed in place and with minimal handling, accounting for the excellent state of preservation of the set. stoo 



