The 30 × 40 cm giclée print of Anna Atkins's Ptilota plumosa cyanotype, unframed, white border, on 200 gsm fine art paper

Anna Atkins – Ptilota plumosa, 1853 | Giclée Print

30 × 40 cm / 11.8 × 15.7 in — Original size, 1:1
CHF 59.00
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The 30 × 40 cm giclée print of Anna Atkins's Ptilota plumosa cyanotype, unframed, white border, on 200 gsm fine art paper
  • The 30 × 40 cm giclée print of Anna Atkins's Ptilota plumosa cyanotype, unframed, white border, on 200 gsm fine art paper
  • Anna Atkins, Ptilota plumosa, 1853 — the cyanotype plate reproduced whole, the feathered white alga on Prussian blue with the handwritten species name
  • Anna Atkins's Ptilota plumosa as a 50 × 70 cm giclée print, unframed, hung 25 cm above a 140 cm sideboard
  • Detail at actual print size: the feathered branches of Ptilota plumosa and the paper grain of the 1853 cyanotype
  • The unframed Ptilota plumosa print against a light grey wall, showing the white border and the paper edge
  • The 30 × 40 cm giclée print of Anna Atkins's Ptilota plumosa cyanotype, unframed, white border, on 200 gsm fine art paper
  • Anna Atkins, Ptilota plumosa, 1853 — the cyanotype plate reproduced whole, the feathered white alga on Prussian blue with the handwritten species name
  • Anna Atkins's Ptilota plumosa as a 50 × 70 cm giclée print, unframed, hung 25 cm above a 140 cm sideboard
  • Detail at actual print size: the feathered branches of Ptilota plumosa and the paper grain of the 1853 cyanotype
  • The unframed Ptilota plumosa print against a light grey wall, showing the white border and the paper edge
Anna Atkins – Ptilota plumosa, 1853 | Giclée Print

Anna Atkins – Ptilota plumosa, 1853 | Giclée Print

CHF 59.00
Size

Ptilota plumosa is a red alga that grows in fine, opposite branches, like a feather cut from wire. Under the sun, on iron-salted paper, it left this: a white plume on Prussian blue, every side branch separated, nothing drawn.

Anna Atkins made her images without a camera. She laid the dried plant on coated paper, exposed it to daylight and rinsed it in water. Between 1843 and 1853 she did this several thousand times and produced Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions — the first book in history illustrated with photographs. Perhaps twenty-five copies were ever assembled.

What this is. A giclée reproduction of one of Atkins's cyanotypes, printed with pigment inks. It is not a cyanotype and is not sold as one — a real cyanotype is a unique object made in sunlight, and Atkins's are in museums.

Scale
Original: 25.3 × 20 cm / 10.0 × 7.9 in — Metropolitan Museum of Art
30 × 40 cm / 11.8 × 15.7 in — Original size, 1:1
50 × 70 cm / 19.7 × 27.6 in — Enlarged, 2.1× original

At original size the sheet carries the cyanotype exactly as Atkins made it. Enlarged, the plume reads across a room and the paper grain of 1853 becomes visible — which is a different picture, and a deliberate one.

The plate is reproduced whole, including Atkins's handwritten species name. Only the museum's mount around the sheet is trimmed away.

Provenance
Anna Atkins (1799–1871), Ptilota plumosa, from Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, 1843–1853; cyanotype, image 25.3 × 20 cm.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Collection, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2005, Acc. No. 2005.100.557 (31).
The work is in the public domain worldwide; the Museum publishes its digitisation under Open Access (CC0).

The print
Giclée on 200 gsm FSC-certified fine art paper, twelve pigment inks. White border, optical centre. The paper tone of the original is kept, not corrected. Unframed. Shipped rolled in a tube.

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