This fascinating lithographed folio engraving originates from Lorenz Oken's monumental natural history work produced in Stuttgart &/or Zurich from 1833-42, featuring anatomical studies of the intricate skeletons of snakes, chameleons, crocodiles, and other reptiles.
The Volumes:
The General Natural History for All Classes is a monumental work of natural history by the biologist and natural philosopher Lorenz Oken (1779–1851), which contains virtually the entire scientific and natural-philosophical oeuvre of this most important representative of Schelling's natural-philosophical teachings.
The thirteen volumes of General Natural History were published between 1833 and 1841 by Hoffmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung in Stuttgart and were supplemented in the following two years by an illustrated atlas and a universal index.
The Author:
Lorenz Oken (1779 – 1851) was a German naturalist, botanist, biologist, and ornithologist. Oken was a German transcendental naturalist, philosopher & physician, influenced by Pythagorean mysticism, becoming a self-proclaimed pantheist. In his time, this German physician, philosopher, and mystic was considered a brilliant thinker by many Americans, including the New England transcendentalists. To Oken, God exhibited himself in nature, and when God meets man he meets himself, for man is a god created by God. Oken was a prolific & vocal writer, lecturer and theorist, publishing many philosophical treatises during his life. His masterpiece and lasting legacy to the world is the 13-volume "Naturgeschichte für alle Stände" (Natural History for all Social Ranks), first published in 1831.
The Plates & 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 or steel 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.
The plates for this work appear to have originally been engraved in copper, then the finely engraved lines were transferred to a lithographic stone by means of a 'transfer paper', a highly proprietary, secretive process aout which not much information is readily available.
Every part of these prints was made by hand: Hand drawn & engraved on Copper or steel 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:
Excellent condition to my eye for a plate this old. Typical age-toning & antiquarian character. Please peruse the photos.
These prints are often very old & may have minor imperfections expected with age, such as some typical age-toning of the paper, oxidation of the old original watercolors, spots, text-offsetting, artifacts from having been bound into a book & handled, etc. Occaisionally a gallery or dealer in the past would lightly pencil an inventory note on the back or in a margin on the sheet. Please examine the photos & details carefully.
Text Page(s): This one comes without original text pages.
Size: 13-1/2" x 10-3/4" approximately.
Combined Shipping:
Yes! Multiple prints can be combined into one 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.
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Please note: The information I've included in this listing is based on my best research & observations as an enthusiast of these works, not a professional historian of antiquarian books & prints. I do like to offer some background information readily available to me but make no claims representations of total accuracy. I also sometimes offer my own perceptions, appreciations, observations, opinions & regard for these works, which are my own, & not to be construed as definitive, scholarly statements. Any corrections or further information you might offer would certainly appreciated! The scans in the images are my best efforts to accurately show the item. Antique prints & old paper are notoriously tricky to scan accurately. In my experience, scanners tend to be thrown off by the off-whites & gradations in age-toned paper. If the scanner produces a scan that's too dark or too brown, etc, I'll often try to reasonably color-correct to represent the print as accurately as possible. I'm not a professional in color-correcting images yet I try my best to show the print as close to the original as possible. I also find that different monitors show colors differently, & eBay's system can sometimes throw off the colors a bit in the uploaded JPEG images as they appear on their site. Thank you!