Zedoary and Grains of Paradise Spice Plants, Antique Bertuch Print, circa 1805

This antique botanical print from Bertuch's Bilderbuch shows two spice plants of the ginger family, zedoary or white turmeric and grains of paradise. The heading reads Pflanzen LXVII and the Vienna mark VI.B.21 is engraved faintly at lower right.

Figure 1 shows zedoary, then called Amomum zedoaria, with a pale spike of white flowers rising from a cluster of knobbly rhizomes, and a detached flower marked a. Figure 2 shows the grains of paradise plant, with broad striped leaves, a creeping rhizome and a branched cluster of fruit, and small red flowers marked c and d. Both were valued in European kitchens and pharmacies as warming spices and remedies, and grains of paradise from the Guinea coast was once a substitute for black pepper. The plate is a good example of Bertuch's interest in the plants behind colonial trade goods.

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 VI.B.21. Vienna volume VI follows Weimar volume III, which appeared in 1798, 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 and a few spots confined to the margins; the image itself is clean and fresh.

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