New Zealand Flax with Flower Details, Antique Bertuch Print, circa 1815

This antique botanical print from Bertuch's Bilderbuch shows the New Zealand flax, Phormium tenax, with its tall flowering stem and broad striped leaves. The heading reads Pflanzen CL and the Vienna mark XVI.B.28 is engraved at lower right.

The plant rises from a fan of long sword shaped leaves colored in green, yellow and red, and a branching stem carries tubular yellow flowers, with several flowers and stamens drawn separately at left. The show through of the text on the reverse reads Der neuseelaendische Flachs, confirming the subject. Known to the Maori as harakeke, the plant yields a strong fibre that Cook's voyages brought to European attention, and it was grown experimentally in Europe as a source of rope and cloth.

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 begun by Anton Pichler as the Bilderbuch zum Nutzen und Vergnuegen der Jugend, with text in German and French; Pichler issued the first ten volumes, and the later volumes, including this one, are believed to have been issued by B. Ph. Bauer in Vienna. 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 the mark XVI.B.28. Vienna volume XVI follows Weimar volume VIII, which appeared in 1813, 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 toning, show through of the verso text and a brown stain in the left margin near the plate mark; the image is otherwise clean.

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