Exceedingly Scarce 1835-42 Hand-Colored Copperplate Engraving (Part Litho?) From:
 
FLORA
eller 
Colorerede Afbildninger
af
Pragt-Blomster
 udgivet af
JOH. ERNST CHR. WALTER
Kopenhagen 1835-47

No. 30 STRELITZIA Parvifolia Var. Juncea


Of the magnificent & very best of the original antique botanical prints & engravings of the stunning Bird of Paradise flower I've passionately found over many years, this is probably the best of the best. Certainly the rarest. So here's one of my very best botanical prints.

It apparently can't be found there's not a single original of this stunning plate I can find  anywhere. The work was hand-printed & colored in such few copies, it's apparently impossible to find any complete sets, at best couple of incomplete fragments of volumes. The work has many gorgeous botanical blooms, lusciously colored,  but I've never seen another copy of this plate, nor this Vol. 1 with this plate. 

The plate is a singularly stunning, iconically rendered portrait of about the most magnificent flower ever to exist (imo ;)

The Volumes:
Walter's famed "Flora eller colorerede Afbildninger af Pragt-Blomster" (Eng: 'Flora or colored depictions of magnificent flowers' is so rare that almost no complete copies are known.

"Of exceptional rarity, this edition is unrecorded in the catalogue of the British Museum of Natural History, Linean Society, Lindley Library, Kew and Massachusetts Horticultural Society..." (Nissen).

This plate appears to be far & away the best of all the gorgeous hand-painted engravings Walter created for this work, from the first and only edition of the rare botanical masterpiece.

The Artist & Engraver:
Johan Ernst Christian Walter (1799–1860) was a Danish artist, copper engraver, lithographer, and ornithologist known for his detailed bird illustrations, botanical portraits and landscape paintings.

He was born on April 24, 1799, in Ratzeburg & died on May 28, 1860, in Ordrup, Denmark.

He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts & was active as a painter, printmaker, and draftsman in Copenhagen during the 19th century

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

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.

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. Little age-toning, minor signs of handling as is typical, remnant binding attachment at back of left edge, etc.

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 its original text-page. I've included a public-domain scan of a cover page of one of the fascicles for reference, it's not part of the listing.

About this Gorgeous Flowering Plant:

  • Strelitzia juncea, the rush-leaved strelitzia or narrow-leaved bird of paradise, is indigenous to South Africa.
  • It is threatened in part by illegal removal for horticultural purposes. This species is thought to be one of the most frost-resistant of the genus Strelitzia.

Size:
13 x 9-3/4" inches approximately.

Combined Shipping:
Yes! Multiple prints combine into one package. If you put al in your cart & check out together, eBay should auto-combine. If you purchase separately or are assessed multiple shipping for one combined package, I'll endeavor to refund any overage asap.

Thanks for Visiting!

Please note: The information I've included in this listing is based on my best research as an enthusiast of these works, not a professional historian of antiquarian books & prints. I like to research & offer some background information about these works which is readily available to me, but I make no claims of total accuracy. 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 the colors are off, etc, I'll often try to reasonably color-correct to represent the print more as accurately as I'm reasonably able, although I'm not a professional in color-correcting images. 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!