Decorative Antique Chromolithograph of Maidenhair Ferns by Blair, circa 1885

This original antique fern chromolithograph shows the maidenhair ferns, Adiantum capillus-veneris, the true maidenhair or Venus hair fern, beside its southern relative Adiantum aethiopicum, both drawn with the fan shaped leaflets and black, hair fine stems that make this the most graceful genus in the book. A fruiting pinnule of each, with the spores tucked under the leaf edge, sits at the foot. It is a plate from James Britten's European Ferns, published in London by Cassell, circa 1885, after a drawing made from the living plant by David Blair.

The plate comes from European Ferns by James Britten, issued in London by Cassell in parts between 1879 and 1881 and bound up as one quarto volume with thirty colored plates. This copy carries the imprint Cassell and Company, Limited, London, Paris, New York and Melbourne, the style the firm adopted in 1883, so the sheet was printed for a later issue of the book, circa 1885. Britten, 1846 to 1924, worked in the Department of Botany at the British Museum and was a Fellow of the Linnean Society, and his text covers the ferns of the whole of Europe rather than of Britain alone. The plates were printed in color by Vincent Brooks, Day and Son of London, one of the foremost chromolithographic printers of Victorian England, and the lithographers' credit appears at the lower right of the image. The color is printed throughout, built up from separate stones, not applied by hand.

Fern collecting was a national passion in Victorian Britain, a craze contemporaries called pteridomania, and books like this one supplied the accurate pictures that collectors used to name the plants in their ferneries and glass cases. The maidenhair is the best loved fern in botanical art, and this sheet shows it at its most delicate. It frames well on its own in a simple light mount, or as one of a group of fern plates along a hallway or stair.

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

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