Our Onyx journal reproduces an 1835 goatskin leather book binding crafted in Amsterdam by Friedrich W.J.C. Kolb. The binding was originally designed to contain a Latin oration on the physiology of plants by the renowned Dutch botanist Willem Hendrik de Vriese.De Vriese, a member of the Royal Dutch Institute of Sciences, Literature and Fine Arts, named many species of plants in the Asterales order (Asterids).