Framed and on the wall
Frame and rooms are illustrations of how the print could look; the description says what is included.
Decorative 19th Century Hand-Colored Fern Engraving, Marattia laevis, 1806-1809
£195 ($260, €235)
Period original, not a reproduction.
Shipped from the Netherlands, flat or rolled, insured and tracked, worldwide. Returns accepted within 14 days.
- Date
- 1806-1809
- Size
- 9.4 × 7.9 in (24 × 20 cm)
- Technique
- Copper Engraving
- Coloring
- Original hand color
- Condition
- Good. Light uneven toning, browner towards the edges. Marked handling soiling along the bottom, right and top edges. Scattered light foxing in the margin. All four corners complete.
- Period
- Early 19th century
- Section
- Botanical
- Reference
- BG-14438-198
What the condition grades mean
- Excellent
- Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
- Very good
- Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
- Good
- Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
- Fair
- Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.
Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.
Marattia laevis is the subject of this original antique copper engraving, hand-colored, plate 152 from Christian Schkuhr's account of the ferns, club mosses and horsetails published at Wittenberg from 1806 to 1809. The marattias are massive tropical ferns with fleshy stipules at the base of the frond. The sheet carries 3 species, lettered Marattia alata, Marattia laevis and Marattia fraxinea beneath the figures, with the plate number engraved at the upper right. Beside the habit drawing Schkuhr adds the small lettered analyses he is known for, the spore cases, the scales and the sections that make the plate useful to a botanist as well as pleasant to look at.
Christian Schkuhr, 1741 to 1811, is one of the few botanical authors who was also his own artist, engraver and publisher. He came to botany from gardening, settled at Wittenberg, and devoted himself to the Linnaean system. This sheet belongs to his volume on the ferns and their allies, published at Wittenberg in nine instalments between 1806 and 1809, with 221 copper plates in all. The numbering runs to 173, with supplementary lettered plates inserted where he had more to show than one sheet would hold.
This is an engraving on copper with original hand coloring, printed on the bluish paper that the first impressions of the work were issued on. The engraved line carries the structure and the watercolor carries the color, applied by hand so that no two copies of the plate are quite alike. A plate of this kind is easy to live with. The green against the warm paper is quiet, the drawing is precise, and the sheet works alone above a desk or in a run of three or four down a hallway. Collectors of botanical art, of early natural history illustration and of German copperplate work all look for Schkuhr's sheets.
Light uneven toning, browner towards the edges. Marked handling soiling along the bottom, right and top edges. Scattered light foxing in the margin. All four corners complete.
This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.
