The Volumes:
The Birds of America is John James Audubon's masterpiece, a four-volume collection of 435 life-sized, hand-colored prints of North American birds, published between 1827 and 1838. Known as the "Double Elephant Folio" due to its massive size (nearly 40x29 inches), the work is celebrated for its stunning artistic quality, scientific accuracy, and detailed depictions of birds in their natural habitats, making it a landmark in both art and natural history. 

The Artist:
John James Audubon (born Jean-Jacques Rabin, April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851) was a French-American artist, entrepreneur, naturalist, explorer, and ornithologist. Audubon is best known for The Birds of America, a book of 435 images, portraits of every bird then known in the United States – painted and reproduced in the size of life.

Its creation cost Audubon eighteen years of monumental effort in finding the birds, making the book, and selling it to subscribers. Audubon also wrote thousands of pages about birds (Ornithological Biography); he’d completed half of a collection of paintings of mammals (The Viviparous Quadrapeds of North America) when his eyesight failed in 1846.

His story is a dramatic and surprising one. Audubon was not born in America, but saw more of the North American continent than virtually anyone alive, and even in his own time he came to exemplify America – the place of wilderness and wild things. The history of his life reveals his era and his nation: he lived in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Louisiana, South Carolina and New York – traveled everywhere from Labrador to the Dry Tortugas off Florida, from the Republic of Texas to the mouth of the Yellowstone – was a merchant, salesman, teacher, hunter, itinerant portraitist and woodsman, an artist and a scientist. He was, in a sense, a one-man compendium of American culture of his time. And his growing apprehension about the destruction of nature became a prophecy of his nation’s convictions in the century after his death.

So it is that Audubon has been called “an archetypal American who astonishingly combined in equal measure the virtues of George Washington, Daniel Boone and Benjamin Franklin” and “the nearest thing American art has had to a founding father.”

The Edition:
In October 1971, employing the most faithful printing method available, the best materials and the ablest craftsmen of their age, the Amsterdam firm of Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Ltd., in conjunction with the Johnson Reprint Corporation of New York, set out to produce the finest possible limited edition facsimile of the greatest bird book ever printed: the Havell edition of John James Audubon's well-loved "Birds of America".

The Curators of the Teyler's Museum in Haarlem, Holland made their copy of the original work available for use as a model. The Museum, founded in 1778, bought their copy through Audubon's son as part of the original subscription in 1839. After long deliberation, the extremely complex but highly accurate process of colour photo-lithography was chosen as the appropriate printing method.

The best exponents of this art were the renowned Dutch printing firm of NV Fotolitho Inrichting Drommel at Zandvoort who were willing to undertake the task of printing each plate in up to eight different colours. The original Havell edition was published on hand-made rag paper and the publishers were determined that the paper of their edition should match the original. Unhappy with the commercially available papers, they turned to the traditional paper manufacturers G. Schut & Zonen (founded in 1625), who, using 100% unbleached cotton rags, were able to produce a wove paper of the highest quality, with each sheet bearing a watermark unique to the edition: G. Schut & Zonen [JR monogram] Audubon [OT monogram].

The publishers and their dedicated team completed their task late in 1972 and the results of these labours were affectionately known as the "Amsterdam Audubon." 250 copies were published and sold by subscription, with the plates available bound or unbound. Given all this careful preparation, it is not surprising that the prints have the look and feel of the original Havell edition. 

Condition:
A genuine Amsterdam Edition Folio after Audubon's original on superb handmade wove cotton rag paper. Appears to be in excellent condition, very little age-toning, possible minor typical antiquarian character or handling with  sheet this huge. Please peruse the photos & Description ~

These prints are 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 without original page(s) of text. 

Size:
39-1/4 x 26-3/4 inches approximately.

Combined Shipping:
Yes! Multiple prints can be combine into one 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. 

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