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127 striking nature prints of Ceylonese plants

[NATURE PRINTING - CEYLON]. GREEN, Samuel Fisk.
Leaf prints. Ceylon.

With 127 full-page nature prints of Ceylonese plants, printed directly from the plants themselves.

With 127 full-page nature prints of Ceylonese plants, printed directly from the plants themselves.

With 127 full-page nature prints of Ceylonese plants, printed directly from the plants themselves.

With 127 full-page nature prints of Ceylonese plants, printed directly from the plants themselves.

With 127 full-page nature prints of Ceylonese plants, printed directly from the plants themselves.



[Sri Lanka], [ca. 1849]. Large folio (44 x 28.5 cm). Contemporary half calf, cloth sides with gold-tooled red morocco title-label. With 127 full-page nature prints of Ceylonese plants, printed directly from the plants themselves. [2 blank], [127], [2 blank] ll.

A remarkable and probably unique volume containing 127 splendid nature prints of Ceylonese plants, including lotus, coffee, orange, lemon, lime, mango, breadfruit, mahogany, tamarind and nutmeg. Most specimens are identified in brown ink in Tamil (plus a phonetic transcription in the Latin alphabet) and English (with some missing names in pencil). Each pastedown has an inscription in brown ink: "Samuel F. Green 1849", the owner and most likely the maker of the album. Green was an American doctor who served the American Ceylon Mission in Jaffna from 1847 to 1873. He founded the first hospital and medical school in Sri Lanka, where he taught Western medicine to Tamils. Green translated numerous medical texts into Tamil and had them printed at the Mission's own printing office.
As Roderick Cave has shown, it was not unusual for missionaries with an interest in botany to engage in nature printing. In far-flung regions, remote from European libraries, with no means for the costly engraving of illustrations, botanists often turned to extensive copying of illustrations. Nature printing possessed great advantages over this laborious method. Moreover, the subtle qualities of nature prints rendered them very suitable for educational and scientific purposes. Its greatest disadvantage was that printing directly from the plants quickly destroyed them, so that they could be printed only in very small editions (at this date people were just beginning to experiment with methods of making plates from the plants, which would later allow larger editions). For this reason very few nature-print albums made directly from the plants have survived.
The remarkably high level of detail and the strong impressions of the present illustrations suggest that they were produced with a printing press, possibly one provided by the Mission's printing office. Green may have used the album for educational purposes.

Binder's ticket on upper pastedown reading "S. Dana, binder" and an inscription in pencil on second blank: "31 Carver St, Boston"; corners bumped; hinges cracked, but still good. Internally a fine copy of a splendid album.
Cf. Cave, Impressions of Nature, pp. 60-64, 137-145; for Green: Cutler, Life and Letters of Samuel Fisk Green (New York, 1891).

Related Subjects: Botany  Ceylon  Printing Techniques 

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€ 25.000,00

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