Original Antique Hand-Colored Fern Engraving, Aspidium hirsutulum, 1806-1809

An original antique botanical engraving of Aspidium hirsutulum, hand-colored on bluish paper, plate 33 from Christian Schkuhr's study of the ferns and their allies, Wittenberg, 1806 to 1809. Aspidium is Schkuhr's name for the shield ferns, the group that later botanists split into Dryopteris, Polystichum and their relatives. The sheet carries 2 species, lettered Aspidium hirsutulum and Aspidium biserratum beneath the figures, 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.

This is one of the 221 copper plates of Christian Schkuhr's volume on the cryptogamic plants, the ferns, club mosses, horsetails and water ferns that stand as the twenty-fourth class of the Linnaean system. Schkuhr drew the plants, cut the plates and published the work himself at Wittenberg, issuing it in nine parts between 1806 and 1809. The bibliography records it at Pritzel 8205, and the first impressions were printed on bluish paper, as this sheet is.

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. Hung singly the plate makes a calm, graphic statement; grouped with others from the same volume it makes a wall. The uniform sheet size and the shared palette mean these plates frame and group easily, which is how most buyers use them, in a study, a bedroom, a garden room or a professional office.

Light uneven toning, browner towards the edges. Marked handling soiling along the left, right and top edges. A few small foxing spots in the margin. All four corners complete.

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