For the love of books: Collection offers 200 years of bird illustrations

By Jo Garcia-Cobb

There are bird book collections, and there’s the Mary and Martin Buchholz Bird Book Collection, a portion of which is on exhibit until the end of August at the Mount Angel Abbey Library.

Consisting of hundreds of avian books published in the last 200 years, the collection has something to offer birders of all temperaments and disciplines.

“The books are not only extremely beautiful. They’re of the rare and valuable type,” Mount Angel Library Administrator Victoria Ertelt said.

Named in honor of the parents of Fr. Athanasius Buchholz, OSB, the collection consists of books collected by the Benedictine monk at Mount Angel Abbey.

“I don’t know of any other bird book collections in the area that has the old books,” book buyer Sally Loomis at the Portland Audubon Society said.

The collection offers books for both junior and senior bird enthusiasts, local and international birders, scientists, artists, writers, photographers, or plain backyard birdwatchers.

“The quality of the art work in the books has evoked feelings of awe and envy in the birders that have seen them,” Ertelt said.

Readers can leaf through numerous colorful illustrations and photos of birds from around the world and do so by continent, nation, state or special habitats. More focused researchers can feast on birds of the same feather, lifestyle, or specific habitats, such as the Oregon Coast or the Arizona foothills.

Those unable to travel far and wide can sample birds from the African bushes, Brazilian forests, the mountains of Kashmir, the deserts of Arabia, the islands of Java and Sumatra and more, through the eyes of well-known ornithologists, artists and writers.

The collection is especially noted for its older, limited edition books, published as far back as the 1700s. A lot of the older books come in beautifully crafted leather covers, rich in insightful prose and stunning illustrations.

Those into reading about the adventures of naturalists in the pursuit of birds can peruse books like The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson. Wilson (1766-1813) is regarded as the greatest American ornithologist before John James Audubon, or pick the out-of-print Rex Basher, A Painter of Birds: A Biography, among others.

Kept under lock and key in a climate-controlled room, the collection is one of the Benedictine monk’s personal collections that include books on botany, opera and Asian art.

Buchholz was born and raised in Mount Angel. He attended St. Mary’s School and then studied under the Benedictine monks at Mount Angel’s prep school and seminary high school, from which he graduated in1946.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from Mount Angel Seminary in 1951. He made his monastic vows in 1952, and was ordained a priest at Solesmes Abbey in France in 1954, after studying in Rome.

In 1956, he completed a licentiate degree in Rome, and returned home to teach at Mount Angel Seminary, where he taught languages from 1956 to 1967.

“He had loved books since learning how to read, but it was while studying theology that his sense of scholarship and interest in rare books truly began,” Ertelt said.

While crossing the Atlantic in the 1950s on the RMS Queen Mary with a fellow monk to study for their graduate degree in Rome, Buchholz met a fellow passenger whose love of the arts and culture made a lasting impression on him.

“She was very sophisticated, well-traveled, and very well-educated,” Buchholz recalled. He and his new acquaintance became table companions in the dining room, where he received a crash course on fine art, books and music.

Buchholz began collecting rare books on a wide variety of subjects soon after his return from Rome.

His first purchase was two books that he was able to quickly sell for $200 more than he paid for them, enabling him to buy a valuable copy of the first English translation of the Vulgate New Testament, published in 1582.

This was the beginning of a collection of hundreds of high-quality books that have been making their way to the Mount Angel Abbey Library for years, many of which were gifts by patrons.

“Fr. Athanasius is a man of varied interests and his books reflect that. The many books devoted to plants are a reminder that he once was an officer of the American Daffodil Society,” Ertelt said. Buchholz took to raising daffodils and won national awards for his daffodils in Nashville in 1982 and in Portland in 1984.

Buchholz grew both his knowledge and his collection of books in the 1980s, when he moonlighted at Powell’s Books as a book buyer whenever he had a bit of spare time from his assistant pastoral duties at a Portland parish church.

The parish priest was not too thrilled about his moonlighting when it was found out, and his employment at Powell’s was quickly terminated.

“Fr. Athanasius has always been known as a man of strong opinions and somewhat independent ways, traits that have carried through into his book collecting,” Ertelt said.

The partnership between pastoral work and a passion for acquiring and preserving knowledge in various fields of study runs deep in the Benedictine spirit, and has led to significant contributions in the arts and sciences by Benedictine luminaries throughout the centuries.

“From the beginning, the relationship between Benedictines and their books and libraries has been profound. Fr. Athanasius has taken that relationship to an even higher level, and the abbey library has been the lucky recipient of the fruits of his work,” Ertelt said.

Although books in the Buchholz Memorial Collection are not in circulation, readers can set an appointment to peruse them.

In addition to the Buchholz Collection, the abbey library offers a wide selection of bird books that library members can check out.