Twelve Outstanding Weinmann Prints in Hand Made Frames
WEINMANN, Johann Wilhelm. Twelve hand-coloured botanical engravings from ‘Phytanthoza Iconographia’ (Regensburg, H. Lentz, 1737 – 1745)
POA
53 x 41 cm each. Set of twelve original 18th century prints by Johann Wilhelm Weinmann (1683-1781) beautifully complemented by specially commissioned “Fantasia Frames” embedding artwork with contemporaneous images of flora and fauna.
The apothecary and botanist Johann W. Weinmann is mostly known today for the creation of the florilegium Phytanthoza iconographia between 1737 and 1745; an ambitious project which resulted in eight folio volumes with more than 1,000 hand-coloured engravings of several thousand plants.
The frame artwork has been rendered, using high-end giclée printing, hand-finished with gold embellishment. All materials used in the crafting of these frames are of archival quality and acid-free. The frames were custom-designed by our artist and built, japanned and gilded by our master-craftsman exclusively to accommodate the Weinmann prints and the complementary artwork.
The artwork in each frame comprises 5.5 cm-wide borders behind glass running the length of the frame on each of the four sides. The images are of fauna – mostly butterflies and other insects – against a background of lilies.
Our artist researched hundreds of images of fauna executed by artists, contemporary with the Weinmann opus, selecting illustrations by Maria Sybilla Merian and others. These were rendered digitally and the artwork for each frame was then created. This was carefully colour-matched to the Weinmann print-series. In order to complement the age of the original prints and give a semblance of the passage of time, layers were superimposed by the artist on the initial artwork to mimic light foxing, mould-spots and dirt from handling. Finally, the images were further enhanced with light distressing. Each trapezoidal image was giclée-printed – the method used to create fine-art prints – using pigment-based archival inks on archival papers before being finished by hand with the application of carefully-placed gold flakes. Each backing-paper is a unique, handmade ebru print created by a renowned printmaker.