the study We have a number of characteristics we look for in prints to determine edition and authenticity. With any given print, you should try to match up its characteristics with the known characteristics of original prints from that edition. When there is a variation from a given characteristic, you should search for a reason that is consistent with other characteristics of the edition. Take a Havell Edition print as an example. What if you have a print that is definitely hand-colored, but is missing all traces of the watermark? It could mean one of two things -- that the print is a hand-colored facsimile or hand-colored restrike (not an original Havell), or the print is an original Havell with the watermark trimmed away. How do you decide between these possibilities? Information concerning another characteristic of the print -- the paper size -- may help you here. The watermarks on Havells are fairly large and run along the long edge. They are located either in the center of the page (in which case they cannot be trimmed away without ruining the image), or in some cases along the edge of the paper. Therefore a plausible explanation -- if the small dimension of the paper is significantly under 25 inches -- is that the watermark was completely trimmed away. But say the sheet of paper measures 38 x 25 -- the typical size of a full sheet Havell. Then trimming could be ruled out as the reason the watermark is missing, and you would conclude that the print is either a hand-colored facsimile or a hand-colored restrike. In reality, it is not uncommon to find hand-colored facsimile prints of a small number of birds. Such facsimile prints date to the 1930s and 40s, and if you had enough experience with prints, you would be able to distinguish the facsimile print from a real Havell based on additional criteria -- for example, the look of the inked parts of the print under magnification to see if the lines and patterns of the ink are characteristic of etchings with aquatint. One point about the "restrike" -- it is an often misused and misunderstood term. Restrike has a specific meaning (this one courtesy of the American Historical Print Collectors Society online dictionary). Audubon restrikes are prints made from the original copper plates created by Robert Havell at a later time and by another person. Audubon restrikes are somewhat rare, but they do exist, both uncolored and hand-colored ones. They are of interest to some collectors, and should be considered potentially of much greater interest and value than a reproduction of any type, but they should not be mistakenly valued at the same level as originals. Audubon prints: overview If you have a specific Audubon print you wish to authenticate, we suggest you visit the prints page in the attic area since it is specifically geared towards that need. If instead you want to learn about Audubon prints in a more general way, this is the right place. We think part of the fun of buying an antique print is knowing a little bit about the history of the print and how it was made. So read on. This may seem like a lot of information to assimilate, but the more prints (and reproductions) you see over time, the more it will make sense. The characteristics that we think are most important in deciding what kind of Audubon print you have are
Want
more than just the basics? Click the key ( Legends. All original 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. Most reproductions are created by taking a photographic image of an original; most reproductions therefore include the writing you would expect to find on the original print.
It is important to know what writing indicates an original and what does
not. The most obvious sign 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. 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. 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 inches). 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).
Bird octavos, when disbound, are usually in the neighborhood of 6-1/2 inches by 10-1/2 inches, while quadruped octavos are
often a little wider at 7 inches
x 10-1/2 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 full-sized Amsterdam and Abbeville Editions) are easily distinguished from
hand-colored prints under 8-10x magnification by the presence of regular patterns of
dots. Under the same level of magnification, a hand-colored print will
show smooth planes of
color marked by the irregularities typical of watercolor paint. (Recall what the
edges of your own watercolors looked like when you were a budding artist at age
5.) If you look very closely at a hand-painted print (even without a
magnifier), you will generally be able to see places where the colorist painted
over or under a line. There are hand-colored reproductions
of Havells; hand-coloring alone is not proof of
authenticity. Presence of a plate mark. Havells were produced using copper plate etching. Therefore on Havells (but not on
the other editions, all of which were produced using stone lithographic
techniques), a plate mark should be visible,
particularly if the image is somewhat smaller than the original sheet. A
plate mark is formed by the pressure of the printing plate on the paper.
The plate leaves an appropriately shaped indentation --
rectangular with rounded corners in the case of Havells -- 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 very helpful indicator of authenticity, the cautious
collector must be aware of the fact that a small number of Havell's
original copper plates have been used to create restrikes. Presence of a watermark. This is perhaps the best known of all authentication criteria; it applies only to Havells. The paper used for the double elephant folio 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.
The 18XX indicates the year of the paper's manufacture and will range between 1827 and
1838. Suggested References. For further information on Audubon prints, and for information on authenticating better reproductions such as the Amsterdam and Abbeville Editions, there are many excellent references. The ones we think most useful are
We recommend three other books for those who wish a more in-depth discussion
of the works. The Double Elephant Folio by Waldemar
Fries is a must-have for the true Audubon nut.
This
unique reference has been called the Bible of Audubon scholars. Octavo
fans will enjoy Dr. Ron Tyler's ground-breaking book, Audubon's Great
National Work. Although primarily about the octavo edition of Birds
of America, Dr. Tyler also discusses the other editions.
Particularly helpful is terms of filling gaps is his discussion of the Bien
Edition. For those interested in Audubon's mammals, Sarah E. Boehme's John
James Audubon in the West, the text that accompanied the exhibit
of that name, makes fascinating reading. Full bibliographic information for
all books can be found in the recommended books section of the minniesland.com library
under the listing for books about Audubon. Information on specific editions. Click on the links below if you'd like more information on an individual edition. The Birds of America
The (Viviparous) Quadrupeds of North America
Last updated 03.22.07 |
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