Antique Beaver and Red Squirrel Print with Hamster and Guinea Pig, circa 1890

This antique natural history print shows a beaver, a red squirrel, a flying squirrel, an edible dormouse, a marmot, a black rat, a house mouse, a lemming, a hamster and a guinea pig, an original plate from C. F. A. Kolb's Naturgeschichte der Säugethiere, published in Stuttgart by Hoffmann circa 1890. A large beaver rests on a fallen log at the center, a red squirrel and a flying squirrel leap through the trees above, and a hamster, a guinea pig and a lemming occupy the grassy bank below.

The sheet is lettered 1. Abtheilung and Säugethiere 7. Blatt at the head, and every animal is numbered and named beneath the image in German Fraktur with its Latin name, here Gem. Eichhörnchen, Fliegendes Eichhorn, Graue Haselmaus, Murmelthier, Hausratte, Hausmaus, Lemming, Hamster, Meerschweinchen and Biber. The rodents make this one of the most approachable plates in the book, and the red squirrel and hamster give it particular appeal for a child's room.

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 colored 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 color 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. Ten animals are shown on this sheet, more than on most plates of the series.

With its broad double page format and lively color, 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 center fold as issued and minor spotting and soiling in the lower margins; the image is clean.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.