Ludwig, Christian Gottllieb

Folio (14 3/4 x  9 3/4 ins.; 368 x 228 mm). 200 hand-colored, nature-printed plates with letterpress legends in Latin and German with additional legend  added in a contemporary hand; some mild offsetting from the strength of the colors, a few plates with light spotting to fore-margin. Modern half-morocco.

The Estate of Betty C. Lewis.

Cave & Wakeman 10; Dunthorne 188; Fischer 8; Hunt/Stevenson 569; Nissen, BBI 1252; Stafleu & Cowan III, 5068

only edition, the complete series of two hundred nature-printed plates. Ludwig's Ectypa and the final edition of Kniphof's Botanica in originali (1757-1767) were jointly "the eighteenth century's most valiant efforts at nature-printing" (Hunt/Stevenson); both were produced in the same shop, that of Trampe in Halle. As Kniphof's book was issued in black and white and the Ludwig only in color, the latter may be seen as the major colored nature-printed book of the eighteenth century. Published over four years in eight parts with a series of 25 plates in each, the plant took the place of the woodblock or engraved plate in the process of reproduction. With the specimens arranged and covered with a dark dust, the outlines formed on the paper were then colored either by hand or a combined color-printing and hand-coloring process. The specimens were delicate and could sustain only the smallest of print runs.