Description: Antique print, titled: 'Reichenbachia - Tab 12 - Dendrobium melanodiscus.' - Gorgeous / impressive large folio size antique print of the Orchid: Dendrobium melanodiscus. Includes original 2 page sheet with descriptive text (English, French, German) Rare / scarse.

This delicate plate originates from: 'Reichenbachia, Orchids Illustrated & Described.', by Frederick Sander, published in 1888-1894. This work is considered by many to be the pinnacle of all the orchid publications of the period. It was named after Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach (1824-1889) Reichenbach was a leading authority on orchids during 1865-1889. By modern standards this work was huge. Where the orchid was concerned, Sander never spared himself, but even so, the care lavished on Reichenbachia still provokes astonishment. Apart from the elegance of Moon's drawings, the technical standards would have been a tribute to any large printing house. The cost to Sander was enormous. Ref: A. Swinson: Frederick Sander, the Orchid King 1970; BM(NH) IV, p.1800; Great Flower Books (1990) p.135; Nissen BBI 1722; Stafleu and Cowan 10.219.

Artists and Engravers: Made by 'Gustav Leutzsch' after 'Henry Frederick Conrad Sander'. Henry Frederick Conrad Sander (1847-1920), the founder of Messieurs Sanders of St. Albans, a large nursery firm, intended in this work to illustrate all classes of orchids, drawn life sized & colored by lithography or hand painted when found expedient. For the illustration of the work he engaged the services of painter Henry Moon (1857-1905) and the lithographers Joseph Mansell, Gustav Leutzsch and J.L. Macfarlane. The present work covers the period when the firm was at its most active: a contemporary work notes that in the spring of 1894 Sander's had twenty orchid collectors working simultaneously in Brazil, Columbia, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, Madagascar, New Guinea, Burma and Malaya (see Hon. Mrs. Evelyn Cecil A History of Gardening in England, 1910, pp.281-282).