Thrift in Flower, Antique Sea Pink Coastal Botanical Plate, Pratt, circa 1873

An original antique color plate from Anne Pratt's The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, and Ferns of Great Britain, this sheet shows the thrift, or sea pink, with the plantain leaved thrift, the water pimpernel and the small chaffweed. Three rounded heads of rose pink thrift flowers and two paler heads of the plantain leaved thrift are carried on bare stalks above a thick tuft of narrow grassy leaves that fills the center of the sheet, with the woody rootstock drawn at the base. A spray of small white flowers of the water pimpernel rises at the left and the tiny chaffweed is given at the lower right at life size.

This is one of the color plates of The Flowering Plants, Grasses, Sedges, and Ferns of Great Britain, Anne Pratt's six volume account of the wild plants of the British Isles, published in London by Frederick Warne and Co. under the direction of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. The plates were printed in color by the London printer William Dickes, who worked a color process licensed from George Baxter and produced the plates for Pratt's natural history books.

A plate from this flora carries its period in every line: the close observation, the crowded but orderly arrangement, the soft printed color laid over careful outline. It sits as comfortably in a modern interior as in a Victorian one, and it has the advantage over a single flower study of giving several related plants together, which makes it rewarding to look at more than once.

Even age toning. Handling soiling along the bottom, right and top edges. A few small foxing spots in the margin. Slight wear at the bottom left, bottom right and top left corners. Minor edge wear, shallow nicks along the right.

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