Cashew Apple and Nut with Acacia, Antique Bertuch Print, circa 1805

This antique botanical print from Bertuch's Bilderbuch shows the cashew tree with its colorful cashew apples and kidney shaped nuts, beside a branch of acacia. The heading reads Pflanzen L; no volume mark is engraved in the lower margin of this sheet.

Figure 2 is the cashew, Anacardium occidentale, a leafy branch with sprays of small pink starry flowers and two fleshy cashew apples in yellow and red, each carrying the curved gray nut at its tip. Figure 1 is an acacia with feathery pinnate leaves, a fluffy pink and green flower head and three flat pods with the seeds visible inside. The cashew had been carried from Brazil to India and Africa by the Portuguese, and its odd fruit, with the nut growing outside the apple, made it a favorite subject in books for children.

Friedrich Justin Bertuch (1747 to 1822) began his Bilderbuch fuer Kinder in Weimar in 1790 as a picture encyclopaedia for young readers, and over four decades it grew to almost 1,200 plates on plants, animals, peoples, antiquities and the sciences. Its success led to other editions, and this sheet comes from the Vienna edition published by Anton Pichler as the Bilderbuch zum Nutzen und Vergnuegen der Jugend, with text in German and French. The Vienna plates were newly engraved after the Weimar originals, keep the Weimar subject numbering in a heading in German, Latin and French, and carry a volume and plate number in the lower margin, here no volume mark visible. Vienna volume V follows Weimar volume III, which appeared in 1798, so this plate was published no earlier than that. The plate is a copper engraving with original hand color, as the Vienna volumes were issued colored.

A plate like this suits a kitchen, study or garden room, and it hangs well in a group with other Bertuch botanical sheets of the same size. For a collector it is also a neat example of how the Bilderbuch traveled beyond Weimar in the years around 1800.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning, a few small spots, a tiny color spot beside the left sprig and minor wear at the corners and edges.

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