Eight Forget Me Nots on One Sheet, Antique Botanical Print, Pratt, circa 1873

An original antique botanical plate of the British flora, printed in color in London for Frederick Warne and Co., this sheet is given over to eight British forget me nots, the plants Pratt calls the scorpion grasses. Sprays of small sky blue flowers with clear yellow eyes are carried on curving stalks across the whole sheet, each spray uncoiling from a tight pink tip in the way that gives the group its old name. Two species at the left open rose pink before turning blue, one at the right is parchment white, and the roots and basal leaves are drawn at the foot.

The sheet is a plate from Volume IV of Anne Pratt's The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, and Ferns of Great Britain, published by Frederick Warne and Co. of London. Pratt wrote the text and drew the plants herself, and the plates were printed in color rather than painted by hand, which is what allowed a thorough illustrated flora to be sold at a price an ordinary reader could meet.

The work was one of the first thorough illustrated floras of Britain aimed at the ordinary reader rather than the specialist, and the price was only possible because the plates were printed in color instead of being colored by hand. That technical choice is part of what the sheet records, and it put a reliable colored figure of every British species within reach of a wide public for the first time.

Even age toning. Handling soiling along the bottom, right and top edges. Slight wear at the bottom left and top left corners. Minor edge wear, shallow nicks along the left.

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