1859 BRADBURY & MOORE NATURE-PRINTED FERNS Plate XCIX Pteris Aqualina

Description: Rare 1859 Hand-Colored Copperplate Intaglio Print from: THENATURE PRINTEDBRITISH FERNS By Thos. Moore. NATURE PRINTEDBYHENRY BRADBURY Plate XXVIIPTERIS AQUALINA, VAR. MULTIFIDA (Soft Shield Fern) From the famed volumes of Henry Bradbury's printmaking tour-de-force in 'Nature Printing' comes this beautiful copperplate print showing every detail of the vasculature structure of fern fronds, hand-colored in the plate.This one is one of my fave ferns & plates from this amazing series. The nature-printing process reveals just how stunningly beautiful this fern is in all its intricate glory.These plates are wonderful, intricate images, & are fascinating as wall art, & work well grouped in multiples.They also document the plant exceptionally & recall a time in England known as 'Pteridomania' or fern fever, which was a Victorian craze for ferns. Decorative arts of that period presented the fern motif in pottery, glass, metal, textiles, wood, printed paper, and sculpture, with ferns "appearing on everything from christening presents to gravestones and memorials"Ferns are back, we're seeing the the classic imagery of the era reappearing in new wall-art, linens, even on mugs & dinnerware. These prints are the real deal, antique originals. The Artist:Henry Riley Bradbury (1829 - 1860) was an English writer on printing. Bradbury is known for his book The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland with author Thomas Moore and editor John Lindley published in 1855 which used the innovative technique of nature printing.He was the oldest son of five children of a printer, William Bradbury (1799–1869). From 1856 he took an interest in the security aspects of banknote printing, and set up the business Bradbury & Wilkinson. Bradbury had studied Auer's discovery in Vienna, who had patented the process in 1852.Bradbury patented his own version in London. After being accused of plagiarism by Auer, Bradbury took his own life by drinking acid. The Volumes:The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland was a book published in 1855 that featured 51 plates of nature printing by Henry Bradbury. The book was released at a time of so-called "pteridomania" in Britain.[1] Along with William Grosart Johnstone and Alexander Croall's Nature-Printed British Sea-Weeds (London, 1859–1860), the book featured Bradbury's innovative nature printing process. The publisher of the work was Bradbury and Evans. There were large folio versions for a different edition, which are now nearly impossible to find & command a high price. These plates come from the octavo edition. The Plates & Technique:These intricately detailed prints were created using the “nature-printed” process developed by the Austrian Alois Auer and perfected by Henry Bradbury. In this unique process a plant is pressed into a plate of soft lead, leaving an impression from which an electrotype is made.The resultant prints are incredibly life-like and true to nature, capturing the fine detail of each fern without the interpretation of an engraver or artist. Ferns, a plant highly suited to the process, & the details of the fronds and stem were hand-colored by hand during the inking of the copper plate. The resulting image was in two colors and provided a highly detailed and realistic depiction of the species. Condition:Appears to be in excellent condition for a 168-year-old engraving. The hand-coloring appears to remain sharp & brilliant as the day it was painted. Little age-toning for a print this old. A clean print as these go. Please peruse the detailed photos.These prints are very old & may have minor imperfections expected with age, such as some typical age-toning of the paper, oxidation of the old original watercolors, spots, text-offsetting, artifacts from having been bound into a book, etc. Please examine the photos & details carefully.Text Page(s): This one comes without original text page. I've added a scan of a sample cover page from one of the volumes to the listing photos for reference, it's not part of the listing. About this gorgeous plant:Pteridium aquilinum, commonly called bracken, brake, pasture brake, common bracken, and also known as eagle fern, is a species of fern occurring in temperate and subtropical regions in both hemispheres.Originally native to Eurasia and North America, the extreme lightness of its spores has led to it achieving a cosmopolitan distribution.Common bracken was first described as Pteris aquilina by Carl Linnaeus, in Volume 2 of his Species Plantarum in 1753. The origin of the name was derived from the Latin aquila "eagle". In the reprint of the Flora Suecica in 1755, Linnaeus explains that the name refers to the image of an eagle seen in the transverse section of the root.Size: 9" x 6" inches approximately.Shipping: Multiple prints combine into one USPS Flat-Rate envelope. If you'd like to combine & need more time to choose, please send a message & we'll do our best to oblige. If you're assessed multiple shipping for one combined package, we'll endeavor to refund any overage asap. Thanks for Visiting!

Price: 17 USD

Location: Great Barrington, Massachusetts

End Time: 2024-09-15T21:52:56.000Z

Shipping Cost: 10.4 USD