Borage and Hound's Tongue, Antique Herbal Botanical Print, Pratt, circa 1873

An original antique color plate, Plate 146 of Volume IV of Anne Pratt's The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, and Ferns of Great Britain, showing the common borage with the German madwort and the two hound's tongues. The blue star flowers of Borago officinalis, each with its black cone of anthers, hang at the left of the sheet above big hairy leaves. Above and to the right the hound's tongues carry dense sprays of dull crimson and purple flowers on curved stalks, and the small blue flowers of the madwort are tucked among them.

The plate belongs to The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, and Ferns of Great Britain, London, Frederick Warne and Co., the illustrated flora that Anne Pratt wrote and drew and that the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge put its name behind. Volume IV, from which this sheet comes, carries the bindweeds, the gentians, the labiates, the primroses and the docks, and its title page names the New York house of Scribner, Welford and Armstrong as well as Warne in London.

A plate from this flora carries its period in every line: the close observation, the crowded but orderly arrangement, the soft printed color laid over careful outline. It sits as comfortably in a modern interior as in a Victorian one, and it has the advantage over a single flower study of giving several related plants together, which makes it rewarding to look at more than once.

Even age toning. Handling soiling along the bottom, right and top edges. A few small foxing spots in the margin. Slight wear at the bottom left, bottom right and top left corners.

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