|
|
|
 |
|
the attic
This page provides extra information on the following topics:
- Legends and other writing on the print,
- sheet size (the overall size of the paper),
- image size (the size of the picture),
- the quality of the coloring (hand vs. printed color),
- the presence or lack of a plate mark,
- the presence or lack of a watermark.
Want more than just the basics? Click the key image to link to our study area for more information (including photos when available) on a specific topic. Return using the back button of your browser.
Legends. An obvious sign that a print is a reproduction is the presence of writing that should not be there. Suspect would be credits on the front or the back that acknowledge private companies, print manufacturers, libraries, universities, museums, or non-profit organizations such as the Audubon Society. If it says, "From the Collection of...," "Reproduced from...," "Copyright by...," "Courtesy of...," or "Limited Edition," it may be a very nice print, but it is definitely not an Audubon original.
All original Audubon plates have legends and other writing including
subscription part number, plate number, artist and printer credits, plus a
title. Other credits may be seen in the form of initials or full credit
lines, particularly on octavo plates. Although legends and other writing may be trimmed away,
it usually is not. Since almost all reproductions include the original writing
from the print, we think it is a mistake to spend a lot of time transcribing
writing, rather than putting your efforts elsewhere. If you are looking at a
bird print, then note the printer credit on the bottom right. This will tell you
whether your print (or reproduction) is from the Havell Edition, the Bien
Edition, or is instead an octavo print (Bowen or Endicott). If you are
looking at an animal print, Bowen is the only relevant printer for the folios,
while Bowen or Nagel & Weingaertner are credited with the octavos.
Sheet Size. Each
Audubon edition has a certain size of paper associated with
it. Because binding was not uniform, there is a great deal of variation in the exact sizes of prints
that are considered untrimmed. Do not worry about small variations. The original double elephant folio sheets of the Havell
Edition measured 39-1/2 inches by 26-1/2 inches (a typical "full
sheet" print might be about 38 x 25). The paper used in the Bien
edition was a similar size, 39-1/2 inches x 26-1/2 inches. Imperial
Folio quadrupeds were printed on paper that measured 28 inches by 22 inches (a
plate that is "full sheet" would be around 27 x 21 or better).
Bird octavos, when disbound, are usually in the neighborhood of 6-1/2 inches by
10 inches, while quadruped octavos are
often a little wider at 7 inches
x 10 inches. Size alone cannot establish the authenticity of a print, but sheet
or image
size can often be used to quickly disprove authenticity.
Image size. The images in the Havell and Bien editions come in various sizes depending on the birds being depicted and the way Audubon chose to portray them. All birds were painted life size. As a consequence, some plates are populated with small birds that take up only a small percentage of the available area, whereas other plates show large birds that are depicted in contorted positions so they will fit on the page. Because the backgrounds used in the Havell and Bien editions vary for some prints, image sizes are not always consistent between these editions, but bird sizes should be. If you don't have a good grasp of bird sizes, do what Audubon expert Bill Steiner suggests -- look the birds up in a field guide.
Most Imperial Folio quadruped plates show the animals in a landscape.
We once spent a wonderful afternoon looking through the Library of Congress's
three volumes of the folio, and our impression was that most images, even those
of very small animals, tended to fill a good portion of the available
space. One happy side effect of this approach is that trimming is not as
much of a problem for this series as it is for the Havell Edition.
Color is painted on, not printed. Except for Biens, the major editions were colored by hand. Most reproduction prints (including plates from the Audubon facsimile Amsterdam and Abbeville Editions) are easily distinguished from hand-colored prints under 8-10x magnification by the presence of regular patterns (usually dots or pixels). Since many printing processes do not involve dots, a lack of dots does not indicate handcoloring. Under 8-10x magnification, a hand-colored print will show smooth planes of color marked by the irregularities (dark edges, for example) typical of watercolor paint. Hand-colored prints will have spots where the paint goes over or under the black ink lines, places where the colors smudge or overlap, etc.
The only prints we sell that involve handcoloring that do not look like typical watercolor are those done by Rex Brasher. These prints involve watercolor applied by air brush through a stencil (a process called pochoir). Under magnification the paint on the typical Brasher original takes the form of tiny droplets. Some Brashers also have touches of hand-applied watercolor (e.g., the red on this Ivory-Billed Woodpecker), but these are fairly unusual.
If you are having trouble determining whether or not your print is hand-colored,
buy yourself
a cheap loupe (typical cost $10 or less) from a photo supply store and examine your print
with the loupe right on top of it. It is generally not useful to use a
loupe on a framed print because you cannot get close enough to the print to
bring the image into focus. Most of us know from first-hand experience
what watercolor looks like. Printed color usually shows a regular pattern
of some sort (although it may not involve dots). If it doesn't have dots, but it
doesn't look like watercolor, it is probably a
different type of printed color. Please also remember that there are quite a
few hand-colored reproductions and facsimiles
of Havells in circulation; hand-coloring alone is not proof of authenticity for
an Audubon.
Return
to TOP
Presence of a plate mark. Plate marks are the rectangular ridge that completely surrounds the image and all of the writing in etchings and engravings. Plate marks are sometimes trimmed away, or can be obscured, so they will not always be present or easily detected, but they appear on many of the prints we sell, and the presence of a plate mark is a valuable aid to authentication. On Havells, plate marks on the largest of images are usually difficult to see (if they have not been trimmed away), but they are usually visible (and almost never trimmed away) on medium and small images. Plate marks can also be found on the prints of many of the other artists we carry including Alexander Wilson, Prideaux John Selby, and Mark Catesby. Plate marks are not found on stone or other types of lithographs, and so they are absent from works by Gould, Keulemans, and Brasher and all original Audubons except Havells. See a Catesby with a visible plate mark.
Havells were produced using copper plate etching. A
plate mark is formed by the pressure of the printing plate on the paper.
The plate leaves an appropriately shaped indentation -- in the case of
Havells, rectangular with rounded corners -- that completely
surrounds the image and all text. On rare occasions, small or
medium prints are trimmed within the plate mark, but this is fairly
unusual. In
cases where the images were large relative to
the sheet of paper, there may not be a visible plate mark, although you may
still be
able to feel the ridge along one or more edges of the print. Although a
plate mark is a helpful indicator of authenticity, the cautious
collector must be aware of the fact that some facsimiles have
"fake" plate marks (these can be identified as reproductions using
other criteria). Also, a small number of the
original Audubon copper plates have been used to create restrikes, that is,
prints produced in the 20th or 21st century by printers other than Havell.
Presence of a watermark. This is perhaps the best known of all authentication criteria; of the major Audubon editions, it applies only to Havells. It also applies to prints by some of the other artists we carry; for details, you might examine the information on these artists found in the print room.
The paper used for the Havell Edition was of two types, J WHATMAN and J WHATMAN TURKEY MILL. Both types of paper had a watermark that can be seen when the print is backlit.
 |
or |
 |
The 18XX indicates the year of the paper's manufacture and will range between 1827 and
1838.
Return
to TOP
| HOME | SITE MAP | ORDERING | CONTACT US |
Last updated 05.15.06