About the Volumes:
The North American Sylva is a most historically-significant work in the history of North American botany. It is the first American silva – a descriptive flora of forest trees. Published originally in French in 1810, the first English version appeared in 1817, and it was further enhanced with supplementary volumes by Thomas Nuttall in the 1840s.
It was the work of the Authored by François-André Michaux, who was commissioned by the French government in the early 1800's to explore the then virgin forests of the United States, Canada, and Nova Scotia. By 1813 Michaux had completed the Sylva, with illustrations by Redouté and Pancrace Bessa, two masters of botanical art.
The original 1819 English version contained 156 hand-colored stipple-engravings which are as beautiful as they are accurate. This work is of unrivaled beauty and importance, giving the first significant & most comprehensive description of North American forest trees.
About the Author:
François-André Michaux was the son of André Michaux, also a famed botanist and explorer. In 1785, as the Royal Botanist to Louis XVI, André received a royal commission to travel to America to collect unique plants and identify useful tree species. François-André, then fifteen years old, accompanied his father, and together, the father-son team explored eastern North America, establishing two nursery gardens in New Jersey and South Carolina, and collected specimens, shipping plants and seeds back to France.
About the Artists:
The plates were engraved after paintings by Pancrace Bessa (1772 – 1846), Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759 – 1840), Henri-Joseph Redouté (1766 – 1852), & Adèle Riché (1791 – 1878). These were some of the best & most famous botanical artists in history.
About the Plates:
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.
The Copperplate Intaglio prints are Stipple Engravings, a technique used to create tone in an intaglio print by distributing a pattern of engraved dots of various sizes and densities across the image, famously used by Pierre-Joseph Redouté in his plates of roses & lilies. Colored inks were then rubbed into the recessed cuts in the copper, producing a print with colored toning. The plate was then finished in watercolor by hand.
The original engraved plates from this First Edition have become very scarce. The few full volumes of this work on the market containing all the plates range in price from $5,550 to $9,713 USD. Later editions used lithography, which aren't nearly as coveted as these.
Some of these engravings may be from an expanded edition published a bit later in the 19th century with additional plates of species collected by Thomas Nuttall (1786–1859), an English botanist and zoologist who lived and worked in America from 1808 until 1841. As I understand it, they were printed from the original copper, with the additional illustrations by stone lithograph.
Condition:
Appears to be in excellent condition for a centuries-old engraving. The hand-coloring appears to remain sharp & brilliant as the day it was painted. Typical slight age-toning & character for a print this old. Please peruse the detailed photos. Printed on Wove paper with strong plate-marks & gilt edges.
These prints are 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, etc. Please examine the photos & details carefully.
Text Page(s): This one comes without text pages.
About This Beautiful Tree:
Shipping: Multiple prints combine into one USPS Flat-Rate envelope. If you'd like to combine & need more time to choose, please send a message & we'll do our best to oblige. If you're assessed multiple shipping for one combined package, we'll endeavor to refund any overage asap.
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