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Elegant Antique Hand-Colored Botanical Fern Print, Asplenium serratum, 1806-1809
$235 (£175, €210)
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. Handling soiling along the right and top edges. A few small foxing spots in the margin. Slight wear at the top left corner.
- Period
- Early 19th century
- Section
- Botanical
- Reference
- BG-14438-95
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.
An original antique botanical engraving of Asplenium serratum, hand-colored on bluish paper, plate 64 from Christian Schkuhr's study of the ferns and their allies, Wittenberg, 1806 to 1809. The spleenworts are the small rock and wall ferns, and Schkuhr figures them more closely than any earlier German author. The sheet is lettered Asplenium serratum beneath the figure, in the engraved script Schkuhr used throughout the work, and the plate number is 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.
This is one of the 221 copper plates of Christian Schkuhr's volume on the cryptogamic plants, the ferns, club mosses, horsetails and water ferns that stand as the twenty-fourth class of the Linnaean system. Schkuhr drew the plants, cut the plates and published the work himself at Wittenberg, issuing it in nine parts between 1806 and 1809. The bibliography records it at Pritzel 8205, and the first impressions were printed on bluish paper, as this sheet is.
Printed from a copper plate and colored by hand when it was published, the sheet shows the qualities that separate original hand coloring from printed color: the wash crosses the engraved line in places, the strength of the green changes across the frond, and the fine work on the spore cases is picked out in a browner tone over the engraving. The plate mark is visible in the paper. Hung singly the plate makes a calm, graphic statement; grouped with others from the same volume it makes a wall. The uniform sheet size and the shared palette mean these plates frame and group easily, which is how most buyers use them, in a study, a bedroom, a garden room or a professional office.
Light uneven toning, browner towards the edges. Handling soiling along the right and top edges. A few small foxing spots in the margin. Slight wear at the top left corner.
This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.
