‘Carmichaelia solandri’ from Joseph Banks’ Florilegium (1769/1986). £225

Sydney Parkinson (artist). ‘Plate 429. Carmichaelia solandri, Simpson, Genista compressa’. London: Alecto Historical Editions in association with the British Museum (Natural History), 1986.

Engraving by Gerard Sibelius, printed à la poupée by Alecto Historical Editions. Platemark circa 460 x 298mm, printed on acid-free Somerset mould-made 300gsm paper manufactured by the Inveresk Paper Company. The sheet is watermarked ‘AHE’, measures 714 x 560mm, and bears blind embossed stamps incorporating the publisher’s 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. The engraving is protected by a bifolium of acid-free Somerset mould-made 300gsm paper, cut to form a window mount on which is recorded the modern and Banksian name of the plant, the location and date of its collection and the names of the artists and engraver. (Engraving lightly faded, traces of historic adhesive mounting tape on margin, not visible beneath mount, corresponding traces of historic adhesive mounting tape causing minor surface losses inside mount.)

Before HMB Endeavour reached New Zealand, Joseph Banks had written in his journal:

Now do I wish that our freinds in England could by the assistance of some magical spying glass take a peep at our situation: Dr Solander setts at the Cabbin table describing, myself at my Bureau Journalizing, between us hangs a large bunch of sea weed, upon the table lays the wood and barnacles; they would see that notwisthstanding our different occupations our lips move very often, and without being conjurors might guess that we were talking about what we should see upon the land which there is now no doubt we shall see very soon (written on the Endeavour, 3 October 1769).

Indeed, Cook and his crew saw the eastern coast of New Zealand on 7 October 1769 and then sailed anti-clockwise around the North Island to chart the coast and prove that New Zealand was not part of a southern continent.

According to Alecto Historical Editions, the Carmichaelia solandri was first found by Banks and Solander at Teoneroa between 8 and 11 October 1769, then at Tegadu Bay between 20 and 22 October, and at Tolaga Bay between 23 and 29 October 1769 (before also being seen at Opoorage), and it was at Tolaga Bay that Banks recorded his collecting activities more extensively in his journal: on the morning of 24 October, ‘Dr Solander and myself went ashore botan[i]zing and found many new plants. […] In the evening we returnd to the watering place in order to go on board with our treasure of plants’; and the following day, they ‘[w]ent ashore this morn and renewd our searches for plants etc. with great success’.

The Carmichaelia solandri, an attractive New Zealand perennial shrub, belongs to the leguminosae (legume) family and bears small fragrant pea-like flowers in the summer. The genus was first described in the modern scientific literature by the botanist Robert Brown in The Botanical Register in 1825. Brown named the genus after his friend and fellow-Fellow of the Linnean Society Captain Dugald Carmichael, while the species was named for Solander, who not only found the plant with Banks in the eastern region of the North Island of New Zealand, but also prepared a detailed description that survived in Banks’ library and has informed botanical research ever since.

The history of the Florilegium

The seeds for Joseph Banks’ Florilegium had been planted with his earliest expedition: on his return to London from Labrador and Newfoundland, Banks had commissioned the young Scottish natural history artist Sydney Parkinson to draw some of the natural history specimens from the expedition on HMS Niger. On the Endeavour, Banks took both Solander and Parkinson (who sadly died at sea in January 1771) with him as members of his scientific party. On his return to England Banks planned an account of the expedition’s botanical discoveries, and employed a team of engravers to produce copper plates of Parkinson’s drawings. 743 plates were engraved under Banks’ supervision by eighteen engravers over a period of thirteen years, at a cost of more than £7,000. Manuscript descriptions of the specimens were prepared by Daniel Solander, but (apart from some small groups of proof plates) the long-anticipated work remained unpublished at Banks’ death in 1820, nearly fifty years after he had returned from the Endeavour expedition. 

On Banks’ death, the engraved copper plates were bequeathed to the British Museum, where they remained in storage until 1900-1905, when monochrome lithographic plates of the Australian flora were made after the original plates (British Museum, Illustrations of Australian Plants, reproducing 320 of the 743 images). The 1973 limited edition (100 copies) of Captain Cook’s Florilegium, edited by Wilfrid Blunt and W.T. Stearn included a small number of engravings printed from the original copper plates in black ink only.

It was not until 1979, following successful trial printings of the plates in colour, that Alecto Historical Editions and The British Museum (Natural History) agreed to jointly publish the full set of 738 plates (five of the original 743 had been stolen), printed in colour à la poupée (i.e. by applying the colour to the plate with a cotton ball, and then adding further colour if necessary with a brush). Only 100 sets of Banks’ Florilegium, which appeared between 1980 and 1990, were printed for sale (of which all were subscribed), together with sixteen further sets, comprising three printers’ proof sets (of which number 1 is at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew); three sets printed for exhibition purposes; and ten hors commerce sets (120 plates from set no. VII were sold by Sotheby’s, London in 1988 to benefit the Banks Alecto Endeavour Fellowship, and sets IX and X went to The British Museum, Natural History).

The reception was enthusiastic: The Book Collector (vol. XXXVIII, 1989) considered the Alecto edition ‘a triumph on many scores: a triumph of imagination, to conceive such an enterprise; a triumph of aesthetic sensibility, to realize that plates originally intended to be printed in black could be rendered in colour with such magical beauty, yet true to nature; a triumph of technical skill, to restore the tarnished plates and print them with unerring precision, maintaining the same high standard from first to last . . .; a triumph, above all of tenacity to bring such a colossal enterprise . . . to a final successful conclusion’. 

£225 incl. VAT

· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Our Terms & Conditions apply.