 He was assigned to make life-size watercolors of native grapes intended as illustrations for a monograph by Thomas Volney Munson of Denison, Texas, a leading authority on native grapes.He worked from live and dried specimens sent to him by Munson, making color sketches of details that Munson would then review; Prestele would then use these detail drawings would to create a life-size painting of the species.The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture eventually decided the cost of printing the monograph with the illustrations would be prohibitive, so it was never published in its intended form, though Munson went on to use the text he wrote as the foundation for his highly regarded book "Foundations of American Grape Culture".