Zingiber Officinale (Culinary Ginger)

Richard Wagener

'Zingiber officinale' is a flowering plant whose rhizome, ginger root or ginger, is a spice consumed worldwide for culinary and medicinal purposes. The ginger plant has a unique distinction of being classified as a culinary herb, food, and medicine.

According to Science Direct, Zingiber officinale, commonly known as ginger, is a rhizome that has been used historically in different types of medicine for millennia, including Asian, Greek, Roman, Indian, Arabic, and Mediterranean. Over time it has been used to treat different diseases such as hypertension, dementia, fever, infectious diseases, and diabetes and to prevent nausea and/or vomiting in different gastrointestinal disorders. Nowadays, it is recognized that ginger possesses different bioactive metabolites with important anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, anti-oxidant, and anti-emetic properties.

This particular plant was discovered by Richard Wagener in the wilds of Costa Rica.

Richard Wagener was born in Texarkana, Arkansas in 1944. He studied biology at the University of San Diego and earned an M.F.A. in painting from Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. In 2006, Wagener established the imprint Mixolydian Editions for his own fine press projects. He collaborated with David Pascoe of Nawakum Press, Santa Rosa, California, co-publishing three fine press books, one of which, Loom, earned the 2016 Carl Hertzog Award for Excellence in Book Design.

Wagener has also produced a number of engraved bookplates that have been collected internationally. He designed the logo for the XXVII FISAE Congress held in Boston in 2000. His bookplates have been featured in Print Magazine; “Contemporary Ex-Libris Artists,” an article by James Keenan, that was published in Portugal in 2003; California Bookplates by Robert Dickover, published by the Book Club of California in 2006; and Three Centuries of the American Bookplate by James Goode, the catalog accompanying a show of bookplates at the University of Virginia from 2010.

Wagener's works are held in over 100 public collections in the United States and England. He was awarded the Oscar Lewis Award for contributions to the book arts.