OP: The Flowing Bowl

Charles L. Webster & Co., New York, 1882. Hardcover. Very Good Minus. First edition.

German born William Schmidt (d. 1905) is considered one of the godfathers of mixology and was, according to Dave Wondrich in The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, “the first cocktail bartender to achieve celebrity for the artistry of his drinks rather than the force of his personality.”

Schmidt—eventually known during his tenure in the New York bar scene as The Only William—wrote one book on his craft, The Flowing Bowl (1882), which is on par with Jerry Thomas’s Bar-Tender's Guide (1862) in terms of its explicit utility. Part of the book’s extraordinariness is that nearly half of the cocktail recipes included are directly attributed to Schmidt, which was, and is, uncommon.

Mixed drinks, liqueur, and wine recipes, which have made the book a serious collector’s item among cocktail historians, comprise roughly half the the overall content, with Schmidt also including brief histories of potable beverages, both alcoholic and not, and comments on wine pairing. 

This scarce book was issued in at least three bindings. Ours is the less common forest green cloth and gilt title to the spine variation. Lightly rubbed with a modest tilt to the spine. The interior is clean, though many leaves show dogears which are now flattened, and thirty pages or so, mostly consisting of publisher’s advertisements and the index, show heavy chipping to the lower fore edge where it appears the book got a good whacking. Gift inscription to the front free endpaper. Otherwise, sturdy, attractive, and functional. First edition.