![Lieferung Iii Blatt 7 Fg. C [Seven Designs For Jewelry With Pearls.] (1872 - 1873) - Die Perle; Musterblätter Für Juweliere U. Goldarbeiter](/upload/nat/die-perle-musterblatter-fur-juweliere-u-goldarbeiter/043-original.webp)
Lieferung Iii Blatt 7 Fg. C [Seven Designs For Jewelry With Pearls.] (1872 - 1873)
Ten ways of seeing
- upright 1.34 : 1
First Look
真山水之川谷，远望之以取其势，近看之以取其质。
—— 宋·郭熙《林泉高致·山水训》
Mountains and valleys: from afar take their momentum, up close take their texture — the two distances from which any picture is read.
The sheet is vertical: the eye climbs and settles in the upper half. Let the plant stand before you look for detail. Then step in close: watch where colour meets line, and whether the line ever breaks. Third, find the darkest small patch: the whole tonal order is measured from there.
Name and Thing
No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. Neither name nor binomial survives: the printed title must do.
Form and Colour
Flowering trees and shrubs put out branches first; blossoms open before or with the leaves, usually five thin, translucent petals around a cluster of fine stamens.No colour group is recorded. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.
Composition
Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. Blank paper is not unfinished work: it is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. There is evidence on the back too: the plate mark pressed into the paper, the slight relief of the pigment, lines worn shallow in a later printing. If you mean to copy it: block in the broad shapes and colours first, detail last; lithographic softness comes from thin washes — two or three pale layers will get you close.
Poetic Resonance
水作青龙盘石堤，桃花夹岸鲁门西。
—— 唐·李白《东鲁门泛舟二首》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the corolla becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
Plum is solitude, peach is marriage, apricot is spring itself, crabapple is a fragile fate; the hibiscus, opening at dawn and falling at dusk, is impermanence. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
Season and Place
Mid spring: plum first, then peach and apricot, cherry last — the season keeps its order. East Asia and temperate Eurasia. Plum, peach and apricot are Chinese in origin, grown for three thousand years. The year 1872 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. See this kind of plate in the flowering season if you can: once you have met the living flower, you stop reading only colour.
The Book and the Hand
“Die Perle; Musterblätter Für Juweliere U. Goldarbeiter” carries only Martin Gerlach's name. A plate is collective work: drawer, engraver and colourist were different hands, and the unnamed ones decided how good it looks.
What to Take Away
Appreciation is not knowledge but habit — one more look each time. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1872 gave a whole day to a single flower.
![Ii Jahrgang (Liefr. Iii) Bl. 9. [Nine Designs For Jewelry, Including Necklace With Pendant In Shape Of Lock.] (1872 - 1873)](/upload/nat/die-perle-musterblatter-fur-juweliere-u-goldarbeiter/042-thumb.webp)
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