Plate from The Nature-printed British Sea-weeds, (1859-60).
Nature printing is a printing process, developed in the nineteenth century, that uses the plants, animals, rocks and other natural subjects to produce an image. The subject undergoes several stages to give a direct impression onto materials such as lead, gum, and photographic plates, which are then used in the printing process.
The person attributed with the invention of the process, Naturselbstdruck, is Alois Auer; the first publication, of instructions for the process, was by this Austrian printer in The Discovery of the Natural Printing Process: an Invention ... Vienna, 1853. This was written in four languages by the author. He shows the use of plants, a fossil fish, and lace impressesed by roller onto a lead plate, this is hand coloured and transferred to the final print.
Many others botanical and natural history illustrations had attempted to use techniques that were a 'shorthand', or for a type of accuracy, in the representation of subjects. Another printer, the Englishman Henry Bradbury, immediately used Auer's 'nature printing' process to publish work of his own. These included two major botanical works;
The Nature-printed British Sea-weeds, (1859-60)[2]
The Nature-printed British Sea-weeds: a History, Accompanied by Figures and Dissections of the Algae of the British Isles. Nature Printed by Henry Bradbury. London: Bradbury and Evans [1859-1860].
the rendition of these species was readily adapted to the process; the two dimensional print would reveal form and detail for the identification of species.
Sherman Denton, in As Nature Shows Them: Moths and Butterflies ...[3] use the wings of the species he is describing, by pressing them into the page itself. For this work he collected over 50,000 insects for the 'Transfers of Species from Life'.
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