Antique Giraffe and Camel Print with Dromedary and Llama, Kolb, circa 1890

This antique natural history print shows a Bactrian camel, a dromedary, a llama and a giraffe, an original plate from C. F. A. Kolb's Naturgeschichte der Säugethiere, published in Stuttgart by Hoffmann circa 1890. A tall spotted giraffe stands on the right, a Bactrian camel and a dromedary rest among desert plants in the center, and a llama leaps across the slope above.

The sheet is lettered 1. Abtheilung and Säugethiere 12. Blatt at the head, and every animal is numbered and named beneath the image in German Fraktur with its Latin name, here Kameel, Dromedar, Lama and Giraffe. The two camels allow an easy comparison of the one humped and two humped forms, exactly the kind of lesson Kolb intended.

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. Camels and giraffes were popular subjects for the family audience at which the book was aimed.

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 margins; the image is clean.

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