The Octavo Nature-Printed British Ferns: Being Figures and Descriptions of the Species and Varieties of Ferns Found in the United Kingdom. Vol. I-II

Description:

Octavo edition. Nature printing by Henry Bradbury. Vol. I - Polypodium to Lastrea; Vol. II - Athyrium to Ophioglossum. The 1850s were the highpoint of the Victorian fern craze, and Thomas Moore (1821-1887), writer on horticulture and Curator of the Chelsea Physic Garden, was ‘the supreme and unchallenged high priest of the [fern] cult’ (Allen, 1969). Keen to advance his unique technology designed to print natural objects, Henry Bradbury, senior partner in the firm of Bradbury & Evans, publishers of ‘Punch’ and winners of a Prize Medal at the Great Exhibition in 1851, hired Moore to write the text for an illustrated work on ferns. Following the original folio edition of 1855-6, The Octavo Nature-Printed British Ferns was published 1859-60, its nature prints amongst the most finely produced in Britain.

Early in his career Henry Bradbury (1831-1860) travelled to Austria to visit Staatsdruckerei, the Viennese Imperial Printing-office responsible for inventing and patenting the technique of naturselbsdruck or nature-printing - a process whereby natural objects are impressed into metal plates, from which electrotypes are taken that can be used in relief printing. In Vienna, Bradbury was granted permission to acquire technical and practical knowledge of the nature-printing process. In exchange, Staatsdruckerei requested that Bradbury should share his knowledge gained at their printing office with others in Britain. Shortly after his return to Britain in the spring of 1853, the firm Bradbury & Evans took out a patent for a method very similar to the naturselbsdruck process, setting to commercially exploit the Viennese printer’s patent.

Despite protests from Austria, Bradbury continued to use and refine the process of nature-printing. His nature-printed illustrated books, such as his collaborations with Moore on British ferns, were directly competing with botanical books illustrated by lithography. Despite the success of the fern books, nature-printing did not endure. Henry Bradbury, not yet 30, took his own life in September 1860, and with his passing no one at Bradbury & Evans, nor anyone else, used this process again in Britain. (Cave, Impression of Nature, 2010).

Condition

2 vols, 8vo, orig. cloth, gt, recased, lightly rubbed. Some scattered foxing. Vg set. Armorial book-plates of Julia Warde Aldam of Hooton Pagnell Hall.