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Antique Prints
 Arden’s
has been a dealer of authentic antique prints since the early 1970s. Over
the years, we have built up our collection to include over 3000 different
engravings and lithographs in a wide variety of subjects. We have items to
add to your collection or to fill a decorating need and our experienced
design staff can help you to choose the perfect frame for your print.
A list of a few categories and items:
Botanicals
Contains a wide selection of Curtis and Ridgeway
botanicals, several lovely images from Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious
Herbal, and Van Houtte’s Flore des Serres Et des Jardins de L’Europe and a
number of Redoute’s delicate succulents.
Scenic or Landscape
Contains a great selection of English estate and
rural landmark engravings, a group of J. M. W. Turner landscapes, and a
large selection of images from D. Appleton’s “Scenic Europe” and a number
of images from his “Scenic America”. There are many other scenes available
of the United States, Canada, and other countries from around the world.
Birds
Contains a selection of Gould birds including
humming-birds and ducks (we have over 12 of his humming-bird lithographs
in stock). There is a group of the popular nest and egg prints. We have
some beautiful Cassell poultry lithographs, several parrots, and other
tropical bird engravings.
Besides original antique prints, we have a very nice
selection of the 1973 Amsterdam facsimile edition of Audubon’s Birds of
America.
Maps
Contains maps of the World, the Hemispheres, North America and other
continents. Maps of the United States, European and other countries from
all parts of the world. There are state maps and a few Texas maps with a
couple showing Texas as a Republic.
Sea Shells
Contains a good selection of George Perry’s Conchology, or the Natural
History of Shells ca. 1811 and a number of smaller shell prints.
Architecture
Architectural
Contains a number of building illustrations with a few triptychs showing
the façade, elevation, and floor plan. There are also some small
architectural engravings showing elements of the building process.
Historical
Contains American Revolutionary and Civil War generals and battle scenes.
We have a few small George Catlin lithographs of Native Americans and one
of his larger lithographs Chippeway Squaw and Child.
Other categories
Costume, Fashion, Humor, Calligraphy,
Animals, Heraldry, Ethnology
Featured on this page are a few examples of items in our collection.
If you have a specific interest, please contact us. Call or direct your
e-mail to Ardith or Keith.
What is an antique print?
While printing has been used in the fine arts for hundreds of years, the
prints we recognize and collect as antique prints were made for
informative reasons. Flower prints or botanicals belonged to books on
botany or gardening. Maps were a part of atlases or other geographical
work.
These images constitute visual knowledge. They showed a reader of a book
on the exploration of Australia what a platypus looked like. The images in
books on travel let people see far off lands and people. Other images gave
illustration to poem and story and others were models for furniture,
textiles or dinnerware. Words alone cannot describe what something is or
looks like. The advent of the printed image allowed artisans, scientist,
explorers, and others to share and spread their knowledge to many people
without having to rely solely on the printed word.
Though these images were created for a more utilitarian use, one need only
look to the works of artist/naturalist Audubon and his engraver Havell, or
Gould and his lithographers to see their apparent artistic appeal. These
images may have belonged to books on the natural history of birds, but the
addition of decorative landscape and habitat, the attention to composition
and color makes the argument that they are also art in their own right.
Piranesi may have used figures in his architectural studies to show scale
but he applied them and natural accents with an artistic intent to make
them appealing. The pleasing form of the antique botanical has even
inspired many modern artistic interpretations.
One of the more attractive things about antique prints is the high quality
of craftsmanship and artistic talent that went in to their production.
There is artistry in every thing from the quality of the paper, to the
expertise with which the image was originally drawn and then produced on
the printer’s plate, to the skill of the printing and hand coloring. These
fine prints are the visual knowledge of our civilization in the age before
photography and played a major role in the education and therefore shaping
of our culture. |
