PRACTICAL PRUNING BY PRUSSIAN PLATE-POLISHER
KECHT, Johann Sigismund.
Der verbesserte praktische Weinbau in Gärten und vorzüglich auf Weinbergen … dritte, vermehrte, und verbesserte Auflage des “Versuchs einer durch Erfahrung erprobten Methode den Weinbau in Gärten und vorzüglich auf Bergen zu verbessern”. Mit 2 Kupfertafeln.
Berlin, [Trowitzsch and Son for] the author, 1823.
8vo, pp. xxx, [2 (errata, blank)], 68; engraved frontispiece and folding engraved plate at end; foxed throughout, frontispiece subtly repaired at gutter; bound in contemporary mottled half sheep with marbled sides, edges stained red.
Added to your basket:
Der verbesserte praktische Weinbau in Gärten und vorzüglich auf Weinbergen … dritte, vermehrte, und verbesserte Auflage des “Versuchs einer durch Erfahrung erprobten Methode den Weinbau in Gärten und vorzüglich auf Bergen zu verbessern”. Mit 2 Kupfertafeln.
Third, expanded edition (first 1813) of J.S. Kecht’s influential treatise describing his innovative methods of pruning grapevines to maximise harvest, first developed in his garden in Berlin and later praised by Goethe.
First published for the author as Versuch einer durch Erfahrung erprobten Methode, den Weinbau in Gärten und auf Bergen in 1813 (and subsequently as Der verbesserte praktische Weinbau in Gärten und vorzüglich auf Bergen in 1818), Kecht’s handbook was reprinted numerous times (including an edition printed in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1828). Johann Sigismund Kecht (1751–1825) developed his cultivation methods through experiments in his garden in Berlin’s Pankow district, discouraging spring pruning of vines due to excessive sap loss and instead favouring autumn pruning and minimal interference with the development of young vines.
The attractive engraved frontispiece shows the development of topped (trimmed) and untopped upward-growing twigs, as well as the juncture formed by autumnal pruning, while the folding plate at the end illustrates various configurations of trellises. Goethe had experimented with Kecht’s method in Dornburg and in Weimar, described in letters to Zelter in 1828 and 1831: ‘For the last 4,124 years … that is, since Noah’s experiment in getting drunk … no one has ever got to the bottom of the question, as to the greater or less amount of skill required in dealing with the details of vine culture, until at last, a plate-polisher in Berlin [i.e. Kecht] … gave us a standard, by which we can judge, how far people have hitherto approached the right treatment of the subject … [In Weimar] an experienced pupil and disciple of Kecht’s has just been maiming [an old Hungarian vine] methodically, and he promises us eighty bunches of grapes for next year …’ (15 November 1831, trans. A.D. Coleridge, Goethe’s Letters to Zelter (1887), pp. 474–5).
Simon, Bibliotheca Vinaria, p. 74.
