Elegant Antique Hand-Colored Fern Print, Cheilanthes tenuifolia, 1806-1809

This original antique hand-colored copper engraving of Cheilanthes tenuifolia is plate 125 from Christian Schkuhr's survey of the ferns and fern allies, printed at Wittenberg between 1806 and 1809. The lip ferns are small, often hairy or scaly ferns of dry rock. The sheet is lettered Cheilanthes tenuifolia beneath the figure, in the engraved script Schkuhr used throughout the work, and the plate number is engraved at the upper right. Beside the habit drawing Schkuhr adds the small lettered analyses he is known for, the spore cases, the scales and the sections that make the plate useful to a botanist as well as pleasant to look at.

Christian Schkuhr, 1741 to 1811, is one of the few botanical authors who was also his own artist, engraver and publisher. He came to botany from gardening, settled at Wittenberg, and devoted himself to the Linnaean system. This sheet belongs to his volume on the ferns and their allies, published at Wittenberg in nine instalments between 1806 and 1809, with 221 copper plates in all. The numbering runs to 173, with supplementary lettered plates inserted where he had more to show than one sheet would hold.

The sheet is a copper engraving finished in watercolor by hand, and the coloring is original to the period of publication. The wash sits over the engraved outline and varies from figure to figure in the way hand work does, with the greens laid in several strengths to separate the upper and lower surfaces of the frond. The paper carries the plate mark of the copper plate. A plate of this kind is easy to live with. The green against the warm paper is quiet, the drawing is precise, and the sheet works alone above a desk or in a run of three or four down a hallway. Collectors of botanical art, of early natural history illustration and of German copperplate work all look for Schkuhr's sheets.

Light uneven toning, browner towards the edges. Marked handling soiling along all four edges. Scattered light foxing in the margin. Slight wear at the top left corner.

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