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 picture as we print it: the whole leaf, from the running head MUSÉE ENTOMOLOGIQUE at the top to the caption HYMÉNOPTÈRES. — PL. VII at the foot, with the paper tone of the original kept. Your copy carries a white border beyond this.
FRAMING THIS SHEET
40 × 50 cm sheet
A 40 × 50 cm frame, no mat. Nearest standard 16 × 20 in. Margins 5.00 cm each side, 3.72 above, 4.28 below.
50 × 70 cm sheet
A 50 × 70 cm frame. Nearest standard 20 × 28 in. Margins 5.00 cm each side, 6.51 above, 7.49 below.
If you mat it
Go one frame size up and cut the window three millimetres inside the printed image on every side: 29.40 × 41.40 cm for the small sheet, 39.40 × 55.40 cm for the large one. Off-white or warm white board, acid-free. Do not trim the sheet.
THE SHEET YOU HAVE
Work
Plate “Hyménoptères — Pl. VII” from Musée entomologique illustré, vol. 3 (Les Insectes), Paris: J. Rothschild, 1878. Wood engraving, coloured by hand. Four species are named in the margin in the Latin of the day: Xylocopa morio, Chrysantheda frontalis, Euglossa Romandi, Centris denudans.
Object
A printed leaf, 19.0 × 26.6 cm.
Held by
Smithsonian Libraries and Archives
File
An 850 ppi capture of that copy, made for us by the library: 6,358 × 8,902 pixels across the leaf. Courtesy of Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.
Crop
The whole leaf, to the outer edge of the paper on all four sides. Neither the running head nor the caption is cut.
Printed at
40 × 50 cm sheet: image 30.0 × 42.0 cm, 1.58× — 538 dpi available.
50 × 70 cm sheet: image 40.0 × 56.0 cm, 2.11× — 404 dpi available.
Both files built at a flat 300 dpi, the most matte fine art paper resolves. Nothing enlarged in software.
Made in
The certified house nearest your address, to one specification: 200 gsm FSC-certified fine art paper, twelve pigment inks, same colour profile, same border geometry.
WHICH MEASUREMENT WE TRUST
The leaf is 19.0 × 26.6 cm. Both printed sizes and both enlargement factors agree on that: 30.0 ÷ 1.58 = 18.99 and 42.0 ÷ 1.58 = 26.58; 40.0 ÷ 2.11 = 18.96 and 56.0 ÷ 2.11 = 26.54. Measured in the file itself, the leaf stands 0.717 wide for 1 high, against 0.714 for a 19.0 × 26.6 leaf — a difference of a third of a percent. An earlier version of this listing gave the width as 21.0 cm. That figure was wrong and has been corrected here and on the product page.
WHY WE PRINT IT LARGER THAN LIFE
Most sheets in this catalogue are printed at original size or reduced. This one is not, and the reason is the capture rather than a wish to fill a wall. At 850 ppi the library's scan puts 6,358 pixels across nineteen centimetres of paper. At 30 cm wide that is still 538 dpi on the sheet, at 40 cm still 404 — both well above the 300 dpi that matte fine art paper resolves. Nothing is invented by software; the enlargement is spent on resolution the file already had.
WHAT WE ARE ALLOWED TO SELL
The plate was published in Paris in 1878. It is out of copyright in Switzerland, the EU and the United Kingdom, and it was published far in advance of the 1930 line that governs the United States. The capture was made for us from the library's own copy; the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives ask to be credited, and we print that credit on the product page and here. Nothing on this print uses the name of the library or of the publisher as a mark of origin.
A NOTE ON COLOUR
The plate is a wood engraving printed in black and coloured by hand, and the colour sits only on the four insects: the rust-red wings of the carpenter bee, two bodies in metallic green and gold, one in black and yellow. The passionflower, the leaves and the ground behind them are line alone. The paper has gone warm with age and we keep that tone rather than bleaching it back to white, so the sheet arrives the colour the leaf is now, not the colour it was in 1878.
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