About this sheet
An original antique German botanical chromolithograph, plate 66 of a Stuttgart folio of about 1890, printed in color and covering the borage family. The sheet is numbered Tafel 66 at the upper right and carries a caption band below the image in which every figure is numbered and named, first in Latin and then in German. It names hound's tongue, dyer's alkanet, water forget me not, bristly forget me not, bugloss, field gromwell, alkanet, lesser honeywort, lungwort, comfrey and borage.
The plate belongs to a German botanical atlas published in Stuttgart about 1890, a folio work in which each numbered plate gathers a whole plant family and prints the Latin name of every figure with its German name beneath. No artist, engraver, printer or publisher line is printed anywhere on these sheets, which is normal for a plate cut from a bound atlas of this kind, so the volume is described here by what the plates themselves say. The printing is lithographic throughout: a fine black key line drawn with crayon and hatching, then flat color laid from separate stones. The tints are even and free of any halftone screen, and here and there a color runs very slightly past its outline, which is the register of the color stone rather than a brush.
What carries this sheet is comfrey and borage at the right of the sheet drawn at full size with their roots, beside the blue and pink flowered lungwort. A plate that sets out a whole family at once is more useful to look at than a single portrait of one species, because the eye picks up the family resemblance straight away, and it is also the reason these atlas plates have been framed for drawing rooms and kitchens for a century. German botanical plates of this period have been framed in this way for more than a century, and the generous landscape format suits a wide wall above a sideboard, a run up a staircase or a group hung over a dining table. Two or three from the same volume hung together make a stronger wall than any one of them alone.
Even age toning. Handling soiling along all four edges. Slight wear at the bottom left corner.
This is an original antique plate, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.
