Botanical, Fern, Lastea filix, Henry Bradbury, Ferns of Great Britain & Ireland, Limited Edition, Giclee

Archival Limited Edition print using cotton paper & light safe Giclee inks of the original Nature-Print of Lastrea filx, common name Mountain buckler fern, by Henry Bradbury for The Ferns of Britain and Ireland, published in London, 1857

Features a large single fern frond showing detailing the stalk (rachis) with numerous tapering pinnae. This pressing shows the numerous round spores on the underside of the blade. Evidence of the rhizome base with fine hair-like roots are evident on the left with the frond curving up right. The original lead plate that bore the impression was tinted with yellow green ink and sepia for the spores and the rhizome roots.

Issued with Limited Edition Certificate  /200 including additional information.

Print Size = 38.6 cm x 54.5 cm (151/3 x 28 inch)

Henry Riley Bradbury, The Victorian Fern Craze & Nature Printing

Bradbury was a printing author from a family skilled in the printing industry. Victorian Britain was a dynamic society adapting to the a new order of mechanization together with new scientific knowledge, in-particular botanical science. With all interest in botanical magazines documenting new colonial discoveries a fern-hunting craze manifested among amateur botanists. All things with a fern motif were answering this new trend. It is no wonder that a publisher looking for success would tackle"The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland". To illustrate the scientific text he sought out and used for the first time in England a newly invented technique by an Austrian, Alois Auer. The invention used an impression from the specimen by using a plate of hard steel and a plate of soft lead. The detailed specimen mold was straight from nature.was then inked up, often with two colors and printed onto the paper. Bradbury improved Auer's technique by electroplating the soft lead plate to make it more durable and improve clarity.