Mary Orvis Marbury Antique Prints

The name of Orvis is known to sportsmen and women around the globe. Founded in 1856 by Charles Orvis, what is now an internationally recognized fixture in the sporting and fishing communities, it began life as a fishing tackle shop in New England. Mary (1856-1914) was the oldest of four children of Charles and Laura Orvis; the only girl. One of her brothers died in childhood and the other two became prominent citizens in their home town of Manchester. Mary was the one who remained to help build the company and, by 1892, when her book "Favorite Flies And Their Histories" was published, became famous. Until the publication of Favorite Flies and their Histories no standardized text existed for American flies, leading to not a little confusion on the part of anglers ordering what they thought was one thing but too often turned out to be another. The colorful lithographs in her book enabled anglers to order with confidence and helped set a standard nomenclature for American flies. The book was an immediate best seller and was reprinted at least nine times by 1896. It continued to be reprinted in the twentieth century - the last printing was in 1988 by Wellfleet Press. 

Many of the Antique & Vintage Prints and Ads that you will find on our website are quite rare and increasingly hard to find, meaning that once they are sold, we may not get another one in stock for quite some time. We have a solution for that! We have created a Hi-Resolution Scan file of all of our print & ads in our inventory. This means that we can "Print-On Demand" any item that you see in our store! Please visit our "Giclee Prints" section of our store to see what is currently available, and if you do not see what you are looking for, please contact us so we can create one for you!

Adirondack Retro guarantees that all of our Antique and Vintage Prints & Ads are authentic from the year stated. We offer our Original Antique Prints and our Limited Edition Giclee Reproduction Prints with the option to include archival matting with your purchase.