Antique Platypus, Anteater and Sloth Print with Pangolin, Kolb, circa 1890

This antique natural history print shows a platypus, a giant anteater, a sloth, an armadillo, a pangolin, a porcupine, a springhare, a hare and a rabbit, an original plate from C. F. A. Kolb's Naturgeschichte der Säugethiere, published in Stuttgart by Hoffmann circa 1890. A sloth hangs from a branch, a giant anteater and a pangolin move across the centre, and a porcupine, an armadillo, a platypus, a hare and a white rabbit fill the foreground and the stream bank.

The sheet is lettered 1. Abtheilung and Säugethiere 8. Blatt at the head, and every animal is numbered and named beneath the image in German Fraktur with its Latin name, here Gemeiner Hase, Kaninchen, Springhase, Stachelschwein, Faulthier, Gürtelthier, Grosser Ameisenfresser, Breitschwanziges Schuppenthier and Schnabelthier. The platypus appears here as Schnabelthier, Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, and the pangolin and giant anteater make the sheet a favourite with collectors of unusual animals.

Carl Friedrich August Kolb designed his Naturgeschichte der Säugethiere as an Anschauungs Unterricht für Schule und Haus, an object lesson for school and home, and the title page of this second edition announces 123 coloured figures on 18 double folio plates together with 63 woodcuts in the text. The publisher was the Hoffmann'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung of Wilhelm Nübling in Stuttgart, and the plates were printed by colour lithography, a process that allowed German publishers of the later nineteenth century to issue large, bright teaching images at a price schools and families could afford. Kolb arranged the mammals in systematic order across the series, so each sheet brings together related animals from several continents in a single imagined landscape. Several of these animals, above all the platypus, were still objects of great curiosity to European readers of the period.

With its broad double page format and lively colour, this chromolithograph suits a study, a library, a child's room or a natural history wall, and it can be grouped with other plates from the same series to build a set.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning, a faint centre fold as issued and a few small spots in the margins; the image is clean and strong.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.