Sertum orchidaceum; A wreath of the most beautiful orchidaceous flowers Pl.13 (1838)
Lchomburgkia marqinata|Sertum orchidaceum; A wreath of the most beautiful orchidaceous flowers Pl.13 (1838)
Sertum orchidaceum; A wreath of the most beautiful orchidaceous flowers Pl.13 (1838)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast red
- upright 1.57 : 1
First Look
搜尽奇峰打草稿。
—— 清·石涛《苦瓜和尚画语录》
Exhaust the strange peaks, and then make the sketch.
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
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 8.5% of the sheet, foliage 0.2%, the cast red with a second note of amber. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Orchids carry pseudobulbs or fleshy roots; six tepals, one modified into a lip that serves as a landing stage, and a column uniting stamens and pistil — a structure unique to the family.No colour group is recorded. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
Composition
The sheet is tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 10% of the sheet, centred above centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography; stipple could render the softest transition. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions. If you mean to copy it: take its skeleton, its margins and the order of its colours; the burin's hatching is the language of copper — suggest it with pencil density, do not imitate it stroke for stroke.
Poetic Resonance
江有香草目以兰，黄鹄高飞离哉翻。
—— 两汉·佚名《临高台》
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
In China the orchid is the gentleman who blooms unseen; in Victorian Europe it was luxury and obsession, a single new species worth a fortune. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
Season and Place
Varies by genus: temperate terrestrials flower in spring and summer, tropical epiphytes almost year-round. Worldwide, richest on tropical mountains. Chinese cymbidiums come from the hills of the south. The year 1838 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The bud and the ripe fruit on one branch tell the season; the name in the title often tells the journey.
The Book and the Hand
“Sertum orchidaceum; A wreath of the most beautiful orchidaceous flowers” carries only John Lindley's name. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
What to Take Away
Appreciation is not knowledge but habit — one more look each time. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1838.
About this plate
Sertum orchidaceum; A wreath of the most beautiful orchidaceous flowers Pl.13 (1838) is plate 13, from Sertum orchidaceum; A wreath of the most beautiful orchidaceous flowers, drawn by John Lindley. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: London, J. Ridgway, 1838.
