Scarce 1777 CURTIS FLORA LONDINENSIS Hand-Colored Folio Engraving: MILK THISTLE

Description: 1777-1798 Rare Large Folio Hand-Colored Copper-Plate Botanical Engraving From: FLORA LONDINENSIS ORPLATES AND DESCRIPTIONS OF SUCH PLANTS AS GROW IN THEENVIRONS OF LONDON By W I L L I A M C U R T I S Plate 148 Carduus marianus (Milk Thistle) This magnificent, large folio engraving originates from William Curtis's Flora Londinensis, published in London between 1777 & 1798. Appears to be on the original chain-lined, laid paper, indicating a First Edition original. The composition, drawing & detailed line-engraving are quite stunning. Every spiky detail of this amazing thistle is fully rendered. The way the ruffled, undulating leaves are observed & realized, the rendering of the flower & bud in all their spiny glory, the meticulously detailed hand water-coloring are amazing. Many of these extremely rare plates from this work are among the best botanical line-engravings I've seen & collected. 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 drawn & engraved on Copper which was hand-mined, smelted & rolled, printed onto handmade cotton rag paper, 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 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 pages of text. Printed on the same, huge folio-sized paper as the engravings, 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:Now called Silybum marianum this species of thistle has various common names including milk thistle, blessed milkthistle, Marian thistle, Mary thistle, Saint Mary's thistle, Mediterranean milk thistle, variegated thistle and Scotch thistle.This species is an annual or biennial plant of the family Asteraceae. This thistle has red to purple flowers and shiny pale green leaves with white veins. Once native from Southern Europe through Asia, it has spread throughout the world.Milk thistle is mainly cultivated as a medicinal plant but it is also sometimes used as a food source. Milk thistle seeds (Silybum marianum) have been used for hundreds of years to treat liver and gallbladder disease.Milk thistle contains a group of bioflavonoids called silymarin. They’re made from the seeds of the thistle. The most active of the group is silybin. These may protect the liver from damage. It works by stopping toxins from attaching to the liver cells. It also stops free radicals. It’s been used to treat toxic mushroom poisoning, cirrhosis, and hepatitis. Size: 18-1/2 x 11-1/4 inches approximately. SHIPPING: Combined Shipping ~ Yes! Multiple prints can be combine into one Priority Mail flat-rate envelope or package. Larger prints may need to be shipped in tube. EBay should auto-combine your items if you put all of your selections into your shopping cart & check out all together as one order.If you purchase them individually, eBay charges shipping on each, which I then will need to refund after.If you're assessed multiple shipping charges for one combined package, I will endeavor to refund any overage asap. It's pretty complicated with eBay's system to combine multiple purchases after, & then refund individual shipping costs, hope they improve this someday. So if you can combine in your shopping cart & check out at once, I'd be much obliged! For eBay International Combined Shipping, Please Note ~ At the moment, I've been offering eBay's International Shipping Program. This new shipping program eBay developed, has some advantages since they manage the customs forms, etc. But it apparently has some bugs, It won't allow me to refund shipping overages for individual purchases. So please note: The only way their international shipping program allows combined shipping, is if you put all the items in your cart & check out at once. Otherwise it requires me to ship each item separately in it's own package with its own label. Insurance ~ USPS Priority Mail typically insures a Priority Mail package or envelope for a maximum of $100. If the value of your combined purchase goes over that, they do allow me to add the additional insurance cost to cover up to the actual value. I may not always be able to absorb this cost, so when I refund your multiple purchases, you might see a small deduction from the total refund for additional insurance. I do pack very carefully. In the extremely rare case that USPS damages anything in transit, the best way to be refunded or your purchase is to actually take your physical package to the Post Office & file a claim. It gets tedious to try to document & file a claim from my end, unless it's actually lost, which has never happened yet in in my experience ~ Thanks for Visiting!

Price: 169 USD

Location: Great Barrington, Massachusetts

End Time: 2025-01-06T23:17:37.000Z

Shipping Cost: 15 USD