Seaweeds and ferns: a science/art crossover

One of the plates in Atkins' "Photographs of British Algae - Cyanotype Impressions."

You won't know this, but I have a qualification in Printmaking from this very establishment. And so, it's of interest to me that there exists an interesting Seaweed/Printmaking crossover. It's very relevant to the history of Identifying Things and might even inspire you in the display of your own specimens.

Anna Atkins was born in Kent in 1799. Her father was a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, so she had science in her blood (and the advantage of being born into a family where money wasn't a problem). He translated French scientist Jean-Baptiste de Monet Lamarck's "Genera of Shells" into English. And she provided the illustrations of the shells (ah yes I knew I'd squeeze snails into this somehow). You can see them here on Flickr.

But that's by the by really. The point is, through her father she met William Henry Fox Talbot (who lived not far from here) who was the chap who created the first photographic negative image. She took up photography and so would have been one of the first women to do so. Her father also knew John Herschel (son of astronomer William Herschel) who was instrumental in improving photographic processes. He invented the cyanotype. Under his mentoring, Anna Atkins mastered this technique.

Anna Atkins in 1861, singlehandedly supporting the British fabric industry

Cyanotypes don't need a camera. You photosensitise a piece of paper using a mixture of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide. Then you artfully arrange your subject - in this case seaweed, one of her passions - directly on the paper, and leave it in the sun. The sun-exposed areas turn a deep Prussian Blue, leaving a silhouette, but you also get information about the overlap of the fronds, as the sunlight permeates the different thicknesses. The chemicals are then washed away from the unexposed parts of the paper, leaving a negative image. You might be familiar with the idea of 'blueprints' - well this is the original blueprint from which the term arose.

Atkins used this technique to produce the world's first ever book produced entirely by photographic means, which was published in four volumes between 1843 and 53. She'd have to have made them all individually of course! So only 13 copies are known. But thanks to the marvels of the internet, you can see selected plates here at Flickr, or if you're interested, the New York Public Library has all four volumes for you to look at.

I tell you what, if anyone wants to have a go, I've got the chemicals... you're more than welcome.

Highlighting her motivation, she says in her introduction: "The difficulty of making accurate drawings of obects as minute as many of the Algae and Confervae, has induced me to avail myself of Sir John Herschel's beautiful process of Cyanotype [...]". Cyanotype's not very good for handwriting though, I can't read the rest very well! But whatever, as a result of the book, photography was established as an acceptable, accurate way of producing scientific illustrations.

 After this Anna turned her attention to another Victorian favourite, making cyanotypes of ferns.

Atkins' cyanotype of bracken

So there we have it, a female science/art pioneer. However, it wasn't all carefree larking about with plants and chemicals for women in those days. I read in this article which notes that although she was elected as a member of the Botanical Society of London, women members weren't allowed to speak at meetings and nor could they hold office. At least Science has moved on since then (though I hear some golf clubs are still struggling with the concept).

From Bradbury's fern book

I'd also like to tell you about another Victorian method of botanical illustration, that of "Nature Printing". But it's a bit more technical (in fact, details were sometimes Top Secret at the time) and I don't want to bore. One of its chief proponents was Henry Bradbury and he produced the illustrations for Thomas Moore's 'British Ferns'. You'll notice they're very naturalistic - they were made by a process where the fern was directly pressed onto a prepared plate. The plate was then used to print many books, so it was a lot more convenient than the cyanotypes. Bradbury learnt from a master nature-printer in Vienna called Auer, and improved on his method back in London. He also published the lovely Nature-Printed British Sea-weeds in 1860. But very sadly he committed suicide the same year for reasons that are now unclear, and he was only 29.

One of Bradbury's nature-printed seaweeds.