‘Gingidium montanum’ from Joseph Banks’ Florilegium (1770/1986). £375

Sydney Parkinson and James Miller (artists). ‘Plate 462. Gingidium montanum, Forster & G. Forster, Ligusticum anisatum’. London: Alecto Historical Editions in association with the British Museum (Natural History), 1986.

Engraving by Gabriel Smith, 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 561mm, 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, one short strip of adhesive mounting tape on verso, small mark on mount, 2 short strips of adhesive mounting tape inside mount.)

When HMB Endeavour anchored at Totara nui in the north of New Zealand’s South Island, Banks at first observed that ‘[t]he countrey about us was now very fertile to appearance and well wooded’. While the local peoples turned out to be friendly, ‘[t]he countrey however did not answer so well to Dr Solander and myself as to the ship, we finding only 2 new plants in the whole even’ (15 January 1770). By the end of their stay, he recalled ‘that the immense thickness of the woods which are almost renderd impassable by climbing plants intangling every way’ had greatly hindered their search (27 January 1770). Nevertheless, Banks and Solander persevered, and by 25 January, Banks thought that they had ‘nearly exhausted all the Plants in our neighbourhood’.

Native to both New Zealand and the Tablelands of New South Wales, this edible herbaceous, perennial plant of the genus Umbelliferae is commonly known as ‘New Zealand aniseed’ or ‘mountain aniseed’ and grows up to 50cm tall. Since Joseph Banks first recorded it, it has become extinct in most of the North Island of New Zealand and has declined from much of the South Island. It flowers from August to May and bears fruit (shown at the bottom of the engraving) from October to June.

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’. 

£375 incl. VAT

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