About this sheet
An original antique German botanical chromolithograph, plate 77 of a Stuttgart folio of about 1890, printed in color and covering the madder family and the honeysuckles, the economic plants of the sheet. The sheet is numbered Tafel 77 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 Indian tobacco, blue cardinal flower, white bryony, colocynth, madder, coffee, cleavers, lady's bedstraw, sweet woodruff, field madder, ipecacuanha, twinflower, guelder rose, elder, honeysuckle and moschatel.
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. Other plates from the same run are already cataloged and sold as German wildflower and medicinal plant plates of Stuttgart, circa 1890. 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 the coffee branch in red berry at the center of the sheet, with the dyer's madder and the ipecacuanha root of the apothecary beside it. 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 are among the most collected of all natural history prints, 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.
Light uneven toning, browner towards the edges. Handling soiling along the bottom, left and top 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.
