The plates are virtually uniform in size: 18 x 12 inches (457 x 305 mm).
The paper is acid free Somerset mould-made 300 gsm, each sheet watermarked ‘AHE’, produced in a special making by the Inveresk Paper Company: 28 ½ x 21 7/8 inches (724 x 556 mm).
The engravings are printed in colour à la poupée, up to fifteen colours being worked directly into the single plate before each print is pulled, with additional details added in watercolour.
Each sheet is identified by blind embossed stamps on the recto, incorporating the publishers’ and printer’s chops, the copyright symbol and date of publication. The initials of the individual printer, the plate number and the edition number are recorded in pencil.
Each of the engravings is protected within a double-fold sheet of acid free Somerset mould-made 300 gsm paper, cut to form a window mount on which is recorded the modern and Banksian names of the plant, the location and date of its collection and the name(s) of the artist and engraver.
The compilation of botanical information was made under the direction of the British Museum (Natural History).
Banks’ Florilegium was issued in thirty-five parts in dust proof Solander boxes from Dr Solander’s original design.
SPECIFICATIONS
Bodmer's America have been printed from the original eighty-one steel and copper plates engraved in Paris, under Karl Bodmer's direction, between 1835 and 1843. The engravings are hand-printed in colours, à la poupée, with extensive hand-colouring and some application of gum arabic, in the nineteenth-century manner by Master Printer Edward Egerton-Williams.
PLATE SIZE
The plates for the Tableaux vary in size from 16 x 12 inches to 21 ½ x 16 inches (410 x 300 to 545 x 410mm); the plates for the Vignettes vary slightly in size and on average measure 12 ¾ x 9 inches (325 x 230mm).
PAPER
300 gsm acid-free, special furnish 85% cotton, 15% alpha cellulose, produced in a special making for this publication by the Arches Mill, Arches, France.
Overall sheet size: 22 ½ x 27 ½ inches (570 x 695mm).
PLATES
The original copperplates were worked by Audubon's engravers between 1828 and 1836. They measure approximately 39 x 26 ½ inches (991mm x 673mm).
PAPER
Somerset mould-made 330 gsm acid-free produced in a special making by the G-P Inveresk Corporation, measuring 43 ½ x 29 ½ inches (1105mm x 749mm).
METHOD
Printed in colour by hand from the original nineteenth-century copper-plates, at the Egerton-Williams Studio, London.
MASTER PRINTER
Edward Egerton-Williams
EDITION
Limited to 125 complete sets numbered 1/125 to 125/125 with an additional fourteen special sets numbered I/XIV to XIV/XIV, two archival sets numbered Arch.P 1/2 to 2/2, two exhibition sets numbered EP 1/2 to 2/2 and three printer's proof sets, numbered PP 1/3 to 3/3.
The 15 plates which make up this publication were stipple-engraved on copper by Ferdinand Bauer between 1806 and 1813 after his watercolours drawn from nature on Captain Matthew Flinder's circumnavigation of Australia in HMS Investigator 1801-1803.
Both plates and watercolours are now in the collection of the British Museum (Natural History).
The plates, issued in three parts, were first published by Ferdinand Bauer himself in 1813 to accompany Robert Brown's Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Isulae Van-Diemen (1810). Fewer than 50 copies were made and Bauer abandoned his plans to publish further parts of the work.
These new impressions, the first to be taken from the original copperplates since Bauer's 1813 edition, were printed à la poupée and hand-finished in watercolour at the at the Egerton-Williams Studio, London, under the direction of Master Printer Edward Egerton-Williams.
PLATE SIZES
Approximately 10 x 15 ½ inches (254 x 394mm)
PAPER
Somerset mould-made acid-free 300 gsm 19 x 24 inches (489 x 629mm), presented in Atlantis Museum Board acid-free mounts.
IDENTIFICATION
Each engraving is identified on the bottom right-hand corner by blind-embossed stamps recording the date of publication, the copyright symbol and the chops of the Egerton-Williams Studio, Alecto Historical Editions and the British Museum (Natural History). In the bottom left-hand corner the colourist's name is blind-embossed and the plate number and edition number are recorded in pencil.
EDITION
35 sets numbered I/XXXV to XXXV/XXXV, and one set of Master Proofs.
In contrast to the original printings, no colour washes are applied. The extraordinary delicacy of Daniell's work, printed in a full strength of ink, is thus fully displayed for the first time. As David Bland remarks in his History of Book Illustration, the aquatinting is so good that it depends very little on colour for its effect.
PLATES
Aquatint engraved copper plates measuring 9 x 11 inches.
PAPER
All-rag acid-free paper specially made on the mould machine of the St. Cuthbert's Mill, Wookey Hole, Somerset, measuring approximately 12 ½ X 15 ½ inches.
EDITION
Limited to 90 copies