‘Coprosma acerosa’ from Joseph Banks’ Florilegium (1769/1986). £125

Sydney Parkinson and ?Frederick Polydore Nodder (artists). ‘Plate 474. Coprosma acerosa, Cunningham, Pelaphia acerosa’. London: Alecto Historical Editions in association with the British Museum (Natural History), 1986.

Engraving by Daniel MacKenzie, 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 712 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. (Small mark on mount.)

This is one of the first plants seen by Captain Cook, Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander in New Zealand. Cook wrote in his journal on 9 October 1769: ‘I went ashore with a Party of men […]. Mr. Banks, Dr. Solander, and myself only landed at first, and went to the side of the river’. The encounters with the native population proved difficult – as did the collection of plants. Banks noted only two days later: ‘This morn We took our leave of Poverty bay with not above 40 species of Plants in our boxes, which is not to be wonderd at as we were so little ashore and always upon the same spot; the only time we wanderd about a mile from the boats was upon a swamp where not more than 3 species of Plants were found.’ It is likely, then, that (as proposed by Alecto Historical Editions) this plant was also spotted and collected at Tolaga Bay between 23 and 29 October and at Opoorage between 5 and 15 November 1769.

This subshrub of the family Rubiaceae family is native to both North and South Islands of New Zealand. Commonly known as ‘sand coprosma’, it is found in coastal areas and has tiny flowers (shown in pencil sketches at the bottom of the engraving) appearing from September to November. Although not yet endangered, the plant is becoming increasingly rare.

While it is not entirely clear which artist translated Sydney Parkinson’s initial sketch into a watercolour drawing, the engraving is believed to be based on an artistic rendition by Frederick Polydore Nodder.

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’. 

£125 incl. VAT

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