Plant Based

Plant specimens are used frequently in two forms of printing – nature printing and cyanotypes. In both techniques, the plants themselves create the image through contact with the surface of paper or a soft metal engraving plate.

For Thomas Moore’s The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland, printer Henry Bradbury used nature printing to produce the images of the ferns and fern allies described. The process, published by Alois Auer in 1853, involves pressing a plant specimen into a lead plate using a roller. Lead is soft enough that an impression of the specimen is left on the plate, which can then be used to print without the intervention of an artist, woodcutter, or engraver to produce the image.

First developed by Sir John Herschel in 1842, a cyanotype is created by treating paper with iron salts to make it UV sensitive. An object is placed on the treated paper before exposing it to light, leaving any covered areas white while the exposed area turns a vibrant blue. After exposure, the paper is washed in water to remove the chemicals and preserve the image. From the earliest days of cyanotype printing, the process has been used to create images of plants. Anna Atkins, a botanical illustrator who first used the technique in 1843 to capture images of British algae, produced some of the most notable examples. The cyanotypes shown here, from Laurie Sieverts Snyder’s Leaves and Stones, show that plants are still a popular subject matter.