The record behind the sheet in your tube: the file we worked from, what we measured, what we chose and why, what we are allowed to sell, and the framing dimensions for this sheet.
The sheet you have
- Work
- Anna Atkins (1799–1871) and Anne Dixon (1799–1864), Athyrium molle, from Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns, 1853
- Object
- Cyanotype — a photogram, made by laying the plant on paper coated with iron salts and exposing it to sunlight. No camera, no negative, no drawn line. Catalogued image 25.4 × 19.4 cm
- Inscribed
- Lower centre, in the maker's hand: Athyrium molle
- Held by
- The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
- Accession
- 84.XO.227.26 — leaf 26 of the album
- File
- The museum's own IIIF endpoint, 4436 × 5567 px
- Crop
- [333, 155, 3826, 5306] → ratio 1.3868, located by blue detection and tightened to where the coated blue begins
- Printed at
- 30 × 40 cm sheet: image 19.40 × 26.91 cm, original size, 1:1 — 501 dpi available
40 × 50 cm sheet: image 30.28 × 42.00 cm, 1.56× — 321 dpi available
Where this album came from
Anne Dixon gave the album to «H. D.» in 1853 — the cover is stamped A. D. to H. D. 1853, probably Henry Dixon. It passed by descent to a niece, Miss Wedderburn; was given to the Girls Friendly Society in Paris in 1932; went through Galerie Octant, Paris and Robert Hershkowitz Ltd.; and reached the Getty through Daniel Wolf in 1984. Ninety-six leaves are published. Every leaf in the album is digitised to the same standard — roughly 4200 to 4450 pixels on the short side — so resolution does not distinguish one plate from another here. The choice of which five to print is curatorial, not technical.
What we measured, and why the ratio differs
Our crop gives a ratio of 1.3868 against the catalogued 25.4 / 19.4 = 1.3093. That difference is real and it is not an error: the catalogued image height stops just below the caption, while the coated blue paper continues about a centimetre and a half further down. We reproduce the sheet whole rather than to the catalogue rectangle, and anchor the scale on the catalogued width of 19.4 cm. The printed image is therefore 19.40 × 26.91 cm.
The ceiling at 300 dpi is an image width of 32.4 cm — a sheet of about 42 × 55 cm. That is why the second size is 40 × 50 and not 50 × 70. Nothing is enlarged in software.
What we are allowed to sell
The work. Made in 1853; both makers died in the nineteenth century. Public domain worldwide.
The photograph. The J. Paul Getty Museum publishes this digitisation under Open Content, with the rights statement «No Copyright». Taken from the museum's own endpoint, not from an aggregator.
What we do not claim. A giclée reproduction printed with pigment inks. Not a cyanotype: a cyanotype is a contact print made in sunlight, and this is not one.
Framing this sheet
- 30 × 40 cm sheet
- A 30 × 40 cm frame, no mat. Margins 5.30 cm each side, 6.09 above, 7.01 below.
- 40 × 50 cm sheet
- A 40 × 50 cm frame. Nearest standard 16 × 20 in. Margins 4.86 cm each side, 3.72 above, 4.28 below.
- If you mat it
- Go one frame size up and cut the window three millimetres inside the printed image on every side. Do not trim the sheet.
Please measure before you buy or cut. These figures describe the file we print from. Sheets are cut by machine to about a millimetre and frames vary between makers. We replace a print that arrives damaged or wrong; we cannot replace a frame or mat that turns out not to fit.
All records: museartis.com/pages/sheet-records · Questions: info@museartis.com