Beauty in a Line - Engravings for Seed Catalogs

Just look at those lines!  A sharp steel tool, guided by an experienced hand, plowed out the lines.  Where the metal or wood was removed you have no printing.  The ink is applied to the remaining raised areas.  

This post will look at some engravers who worked with the seed trade.  Engraving is a theme I keep revisiting, with its passing, and that of chromolithography, being the watershed of my interest in seed catalogs.  Before illustrations were used seed catalogs are useful as documentation to what plants were in trade, but they are usually dull visually.

The following is from America’s Romance with the English Garden -

Albert Blanc's work has caught my eye before, but this time I started looking at his work in view of the work of other engraver's images used in the same seed catalog.  I poked around in some Philadelphia seed companies, Burpee, Johnson & Stokes, and Dreer.  I see that the companies hired engravers to make images just for them...copyrighting the images.  Both firms also used engravings done and sold to the seed trade.  That sort of image might be found in many companies' catalogs...the 19th century version of clip art.   Special order, copyrighted engravings are often NOT signed by the engraver, but rather the company name.  You can play detective and make a good guess by looking at their style though.

You can spot A. Blanc signed in the shade on the ground under the begonia.   Initials and names are often done in the shadows.

Here are a few more of Blanc's cuts.

Just the initials here in this simple Burpee carrot cut.










Then his full last name in this fancier illustration.

Below is a nice scene in perspective that was in the Dreer catalog. He even adds he is from Philadelphia.

Look at the rope border on this Johnson & Stokes cut.  Think how long it took to do such an "unnecessary" detail.  The companies thought it was worth the additional cost to have their featured plants appear special.

The narcissus are in a scene that suggests how you would use them in your house.  I wonder, did engravers pick what flowers were popular and generic and did them as "clip art" they would license?  I'd like to know pricing.

That's it for today.  I have more to do on this but the house trim needs painting before winter and school starts Monday...things are going to slow down in my blog world I bet!