PBA Galleries

Chapter headings and tailpieces drawn by Robert Seaman with photographs by Matthew Vinciguerra and Luis Marden. (4to) original full brown leather, spine gilt, green moire silk endleaves, all edges gilt; original glassine jacket; original matching clamshell box. No. 81 of 128 copies with an original sample of Garrison's bamboo attached to the slipcase in a small leather pouch.

Inscribed by Carmichael on the half-title. An electrical and structural engineer who began building rods by hand in the late 1920's, Edmund Everett Garrison brought an unprecedented precision and methodically critical approach to the craft of split bamboo rod construction, manufacturing almost all the parts of his rods himself as well as many of the tools used in their construction. Garrison officially began selling his rods in 1932, and continued producing them part time until his death, while winning great praise from the small group of elite anglers fortunate to own his rods. A chance meeting with Hoagy Bix Carmichael (son of the famed songwriter) in 1968 while fishing in upstate New York, led to the production of a documentary film on Garrison and split bamboo rod construction in 1972, and this posthumously published book, detailing every aspect of Garrison’s rod building process, followed.