Rubber Tree and Gum Arabic Acacia, Antique Bertuch Print, circa 1805

This antique botanical print from Bertuch's Bilderbuch shows the caoutchouc or rubber tree beside the Arabian gum tree, two plants that supplied valuable trade goods around 1800. The heading reads Pflanzen LXXXIV, the Weimar number for the plate of remarkable commercial plants, the caoutchouc and the Arabian gum tree or Nile mimosa.

Figure 1 shows a leafy shoot of the rubber tree with its three part leaves and small clusters of yellow flowers, together with the ridged fruit capsule and a single seed. Figure 2 shows a feathery pinnate branch of the gum arabic tree, now Acacia nilotica, with a round yellow flower head and a long beaded pod, colored in soft brown. In 1800 rubber was still a curiosity used for erasers and waterproofing, while gum arabic was essential to ink makers, printers and confectioners, and Bertuch chose the pair to teach children where such familiar materials came from.

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 published by Anton Pichler as the Bilderbuch zum Nutzen und Vergnuegen der Jugend, with text in German and French. 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 VII.B.50. Vienna volume VII follows Weimar volume IV, which appeared in 1802, 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 light toning, scattered small spots and small nicks at the right edge; the image is clean and fresh.

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