Mottled maroon paper-covered boards quarter-bound in dark green cloth 138 x 220 mm, with a printed label attached to the front cover Botanical/Drawing Book./JAS. E. INGLE & SON, TEL.1380./BOOKBINDERS, 40, CALL LANE LEEDS.; inscribed in red felt-tipped pen 1935; pencil KM (circled); B (circled), all added later. The book originally contained 50 pages of cream medium-weight wove paper 138 x 220 mm in one signature of twenty-five. Four pages from the front are missing. The remaining pages are numbered in pencil, not in the artist's hand, lower right on the recto with the book turned vertically; none is signed. One drawing HMF 1237 has traditionally been assumed to be one of the detached pages, but from the positioning of the indentations along the torn edge this seems unlikely. However, as no other notebook is known that could be a source for this drawing it has been retained here at the end of the sketchbook sequence.

It seems most unlikely that all the drawings in this sketchbook date from 1935, though it has been placed within this year pending further study. The dissimilarity in style, subject, feeling and in many cases media of most of the drawings on the versos suggest that they were executed either at the beginning of the 1930s at the time Moore was experimenting with Transformation drawings (see for example HMF 936-979) or from the end of the 1940s when he was jotting down ideas for Prométhée (see HMF 1196). This last date is further supported by the fact that several of the supposedly later sketches were made over offset images from the 1935 drawings, and that the inscriptions are compatible with Moore's handwriting of the early 1950s. Many of the later drawings can be linked with sculptures of that period, such as Draped Reclining Figure LH 336 and Time-Life Screen LH 344, both completed in 1952-53.