Scarce 1777 CURTIS FLORA LONDINENSIS Hand-Colored Folio Engraving: TOAD-FLAX

$ 299.00

FLORA LONDINENSIS

PLATES AND DESCRIPTIONS OF SUCH PLANTS

AS GROW IN THE

ENVIRONS OF LONDON

By W I L L I A M C U R T I S

Linaria Vulgaris.

Common Toad-Flax

This magnificent, large, Folio engraving originates from William Curtis's Flora Londinensis, published in London between 1777 & 1798. Appears to be on the original wove paper.

The beautiful cream-colored, thick handmade wove cotton rag paper likely indicates this one could be from the expanded edition, published from 1817-1828 which had all the original plates plus more. The plates I've collected from this edition seem to be generally cleaner, the wove paper thicker than the old chain-lined stock. This print appears very clean & pristine.

The composition, drawing & detailed line-engraving are quite stunning. The meticulously detailed, delicate hand water-coloring appears to be as it was the day it was painted.

Many of these extremely rare plates from this work are among the best botanical line-engravings I've seen & collected.

This particular one is among the most beautiful, most attractive & scarce of the entire series.

The Volumes:

The Flora Londinensis are famous folio-sized volumes that illustrated & described the flora found in the London region of the mid 18th century.

The Flora was published by William Curtis in six large volumes. The descriptions of the plants included hand-coloured copperplate plates by botanical artists such as James Sowerby, Sydenham Edwards and William Kilburn.

The full title is Flora Londinensis: or, plates and descriptions of such plants as grow wild in the environs of London: with their places of growth, and times of flowering, their several names according to Linnæus and other authors: with a particular description of each plant in Latin and English. To which are added, their several uses in medicine, agriculture, rural œconomy and other arts.

The Subscriber's List in Volume I records 321 names who between them subscribed for 331 complete copies. So this print is one of the only 331 First Edition original examples ever made.

The Author:

William Curtis (11 January 1746 – 7 July 1799) was an English botanist and entomologist, who was born at Alton, Hampshire, site of the Curtis Museum.

Curtis began as an apothecary, before turning his attention to botany and other natural history. He was demonstrator of plants and Praefectus Horti at the Chelsea Physic Garden from 1771 to 1777. He established his own London Botanic Garden at Lambeth in 1779, moving to Brompton in 1789. He published the Flora Londinensis (6 volumes, 1777–1798), a pioneering work. he went on the publish The Botanical Magazine in 1787, a work that would also feature beautiful hand colored octavo-sized plates by artists such as James Sowerby and Sydenham Edwards. The Botanical Magazine was & remains immensely popular.

The Artists:

Curtis commissioned some of the best botanical artists of the age in London, such as James Sowerby, Sydenham Edwards and William Kilburn.

James Sowerby was one a highly esteemed & prolific English naturalist, illustrator and mineralogist. His immense volume of engravings from his own drawings in the various publications he produced & contributed to is astounding. He fathered a dynasty of Sowerbys who created & published important plates & works on Natural History, especially in the realm of Conchology (Seashells).

Sydenham Teast (or Teak) Edwards (5 August 1768 – 8 February 1819) was a natural history illustrator. Edwards produced superb plates at a prodigious rate: between 1787 and 1815 he produced over 1,700 watercolors for Curtis's Botanical Magazine alone. He illustrated Cynographia Britannica (1800) (an encyclopaedic compendium of dog breeds in Britain), New Botanic Garden (1805-7), New Flora Britannica (1812), and The Botanical Register (1815-19). He also provided drawings for encyclopedias such as Pantologia and Rees's Cyclopædia. He completed a number of parrot illustrations between 1810 and 1812 which were acquired by Edward Smith-Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby. Edwards was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1804.

William Kilburn (1745–1818) was an illustrator for William Curtis' Flora Londinensis, as well as a leading designer and printer of calico. A few hundred originals of his water colour designs make up the Kilburn Album, housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The Prints & Technique:

Line-engraving or Copperplate engraving is a highly exacting & labor-intensive process for intaglio printmaking.

The original drawing is cut into the surface of a copper plate with a hand-held sharp steel point or burin, with shading created by many fine cut lines, or hatching. Before printing takes place, the plate is heated, covered with ink. The warm ink seeps into the finest of depressions and fills the lines and textures of the drawing. The rest of the plate is cleaned off. The copper plate is now pressed with a printing press on to moistened paper which soaks up the ink from the depressions in the plate. The copperplate-engraving technique is very exacting, time-consuming and exhausting for the engraver, who needs a lot of strength for it.

Every part of these prints was made by hand: Hand painted from original plant specimens, drawn & engraved in polished Copper plates which were hand-mined, smelted & rolled, printed onto handmade cotton rag paper, hand cranked through an elaborate handmade etching press, inked & colored with hand-ground pigments individually by hand, & they were usually hand sewn into handmade leather-bound books.

Condition:

Appears to be in Excellent condition for a centuries-old engraving. The hand water-coloring appears to remain as beautiful & rich as the day it was printed.

These prints are very old & may have imperfections expected with age, such as age-toning of the paper, spots, oxidation of the old original watercolors, spots, text-offsetting, artifacts from having been bound into a book, etc. Please examine the photos & details carefully.

Text Page(s):

This one comes with original page(s) of text. Printed on the huge folio-sized paper handmade paper, beautifully type-set in the old English, with extensive information on this plant. Included in the images is a scan of a title page from one of the volumes. It's for reference & isn't part of the listing.

About this Gorgeous Flowering Plant:

Linaria vulgaris, the common toadflax, yellow toadflax or butter-and-eggs, is a species of flowering plant in the family Plantaginaceae, native to Europe, Siberia and Central Asia.
While most commonly found as a wildflower, toadflax is sometimes cultivated for cut flowers, which are long-lasting in the vase. Like snapdragons (Antirrhinum), they are often grown in children's gardens for the "snapping" flowers which can be made to "talk" by squeezing them at the base of the corolla.
This plant has been used in folk medicine for a variety of ailments. A tea made from the leaves was taken as a laxative and strong diuretic as well as for jaundice, dropsy, and enteritis with drowsiness. For skin diseases, either a leaf tea or an ointment made from the flowers was used. In addition, a tea made in milk instead of water has been used as an insecticide. Some evidence may support its diuretic and fever-reducing properties.

Size: 18-3/4 x 12 inches approximately.