Abbeville Edition
1985
The Abbeville Edition was a collaboration of the National Audubon Society and Abbeville
Press in 1985 to commemorate Audubon's two-hundredth birthday. They produced a full-sized
facsimile edition of all 435 original plates that Audubon had done for his Havell
Edition volumes.
The original Havell copy that was used for reprinting belongs to the National Audubon
Society, and is considered one of the finest copies in existence. The printing was
done at Toppan Printing Company in Tokyo, Japan. Large-scale photographic transparencies
were made of the original prints. Toppan then used up to thirteen colors for each
of the 435 double elephant folio prints.
The paper for this edition is acid-free Mohawk Superfine and was made at the Mohawk
Paper Company in New York. Each print bears the watermark "Audubon Society, Abbeville
Press" in italic script. This work was limited in production to 350 copies. It was
offered bound ($15,000 for the four volumes) or in portfolios of individual prints
($12,500).