On good days, five minutes of sun were enough; on overcast days, fifteen. Then the light had drawn an alga. Anna Atkins, a British botanist and pioneer of photography, collected the plants herself, rinsed them on the beach, cleaned them at home with tweezers and a sable-hair brush, then pressed and dried them. The dried specimen was placed under glass on light-sensitive paper, and the printing frame was set in the sun. Only in the water bath did the paper turn from yellow-green to deep Prussian blue, revealing the plant in white, every filament sharply defined. There was a reason for this indirect approach: the most delicate algae could not be rendered precisely enough with a pencil. So Atkins turned to cyanotype, a blueprint process published in 1842 by John Herschel, an acquaintance of her father, and let the plants make their own images.
Anna Atkins was born in Tonbridge, Kent, on 16 March 1799; her mother died when the child was barely twenty months old. Her father, the naturalist John George Children of the British Museum, allowed his daughter to take part in his scientific work. In the early 1820s, Anna drew more than 250 illustrations of shells for his translation of a work by the French naturalist Lamarck. She later maintained her own herbarium, a collection of pressed plants, and sent specimen sheets to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew near London. In 1839, the Botanical Society of London admitted her as one of its first female members. Since 1825, she had been married to the London merchant John Pelly Atkins, whose West Indian business included coffee plantations in Jamaica where enslaved people had worked. The marriage remained childless; the couple lived in London and at Halstead Place near Sevenoaks.
In October 1843, she distributed the first instalment of “Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions”. It was the first book in history to be illustrated with photographs, appearing around eight months before “The Pencil of Nature” by the photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot. It was never sold; over the course of ten years, the instalments were privately sent to institutions and specialists, including the Royal Society, the British Museum and botanical gardens. Because each recipient arranged for their own binding, no two surviving copies are alike. There is no printed type anywhere in the book; the title page, foreword and every caption are cyanotypes of her handwriting. The inscribed slips were soaked in oil until the paper became translucent and only the ink blocked the light. Researchers estimate that she personally made around six thousand exposures for the few copies produced.
“Halydrys siliquosa, ca. 1853” comes from this work on algae. A seaweed rises from the lower edge, bearing pod-shaped air bladders; every branch stands clear and sharp against the blue. After her father's death in 1852, the tone of her work changed. The following summer, she collected plants with her childhood friend Anne Dixon. The scientific serial gave way to private presentation albums, and the plates grew larger because ferns need more space than algae. In 1853, she created an album of British and foreign ferns; in 1854, one of flowering plants and ferns for Anne Dixon; and in 1861, a third for Anne Dixon's nephew. “Leucojam Varium”, made together with Anne Dixon, belongs to the 1854 album. Two star-shaped flowers incline away from each other, two narrow leaves form a tall V, and the bulb hangs below in the blue. The title preserves the sheet's idiosyncratic spelling, Leucojam instead of the botanically correct Leucojum. Also in the collection is “New Zealand”, a fern frond dividing into ever finer leaflets, inscribed New Zealand in her own hand. Its album of origin cannot be determined with certainty, but its branching form appears in white on blue like the finest lace.
During these years, she also wrote novels, beginning with “The Perils of Fashion” in 1852. In 1865, she donated her plant collection to the British Museum. She died on 9 June 1871 at Halstead Place near Sevenoaks. Her obituary praised a kind and charitable lady, but made no mention of the blue sheets. She herself had signed her foreword only “A. A.”, and the initials were later interpreted as “anonymous amateur”. Only twentieth-century research, led above all by photography historian Larry J. Schaaf, reunited the work with its creator's name. In 2018 and 2019, the New York Public Library presented her sheets to a wide audience in an exhibition titled “Blue Prints”.
Even so, the originals are rarely on view. The surviving volumes are held in libraries and collections, and because Prussian blue is sensitive to light, a sheet may be exposed to museum lighting for only a few weeks before returning to storage. An art print reverses this relationship; on your own wall, one of her sheets gains a daily audience for the first time, year after year. We at Meisterdrucke love that thought: throughout her life, Anna Atkins gave her sheets away rather than selling them - and now her blue hangs wherever someone will see it every day.
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.jpg "New Zealand by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Leucojam Varium by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Kalymenia Dubyi by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Halydrys siliquosa, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Cystoseira Granulata by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Cystoseira feniculacea, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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 - (MeisterDrucke-819).jpg "Osmunda Rigalis (Australia) by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Pteris Aquilina by Anna Atkins")
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_-_(MeisterDrucke-875431).jpg "Carix (America) by Anna Atkins")
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 - (MeisterDrucke-816).jpg "Carix (America) by Anna Atkins")
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_-_(MeisterDrucke-1060868).jpg "Osmunda Rigalis (Australia) by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Pteris Aquilina by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Ceramium Rubrum by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Foreign Ferns by Anna Atkins")
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_-_(MeisterDrucke-1563320).jpg "Osmunda Regalis (Australia) by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Striaria Attenuata by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Polysiphonia Brodiaei by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Ferns. Specimen of Cyanotype, 1840s by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "New Zealand by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Polysiphonia Urceolata by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Schizonema Wyattiae by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Ectocarpus amphibius by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Gloisiphonia Capillaris by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Laminaria saccharina by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Ectocarpus distantus by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Polysiphonia fastigiata, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Foreign Ferns by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Cystoseira granulata, from \"Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions\" by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Sporochnius rhizodes ß paracloxa by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Ferns. Specimen of Cyanotype by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Chorda Filum by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Ptilota plumosa. ß capillaris, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Polysiphonia Elongata by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Desmarestia aculeata, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Polysiphonia subulifera by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Polysiphonia fruticulosa, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Griffithsia Corallina by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Cystoseira foeniculacea, from")
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.jpg "Polysiphonia cristata by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Diatoma Marinum on Ceramium Rubrum by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Schizonema Dillwynii by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Ceramium Diaphanum by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Enteromorpha clathrata, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Sphacelaria scoparia by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Ceramium Ciliatum by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Polysiphonia parasitica by Anna Atkins")
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_-_(MeisterDrucke-1472187).jpg "Himanthalia Lorea from Photographs of British Algae by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Bangia Fusco-Purpurea by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Exillaria Crystallinum Parasitic by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Dichsonia arborescens, Jamaica by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Dictyota atomaria, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Cladostephus Verticillatus by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Polysiphonia byssoides, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Cladostephus spongiosus by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Gelidium Rostratum by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Enteromorpha ramulosa by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Schizonema Smithii by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Himanthalia Lorea by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Griffithsia Setacea, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Achnanthes longipes, parasitic, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Polysiphonia nigrescens by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Cystoseira barbata by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Grateloupia filicina, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Schizonema Helminthosum by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Ectocarpus Landsburghii by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Schizonema implicatum by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Dictyota Dichotoma by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Scolopendrium Vulgare by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Schizonema Ramosissimium, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Dictyota Atomaria by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Cystoseira ericoides by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Gelidium corneum, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Polysiphonia Thuyoides by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Asplenium Braziliense, South America by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Polysiphonia fibrata, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Griffithsia Multiflida by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Fucus aeruginosus Turner. Med. Sea Sisbon New to Britain, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Delesseria sinvosa, var., ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Spiraea aruncus Tyrol, 1851-54 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Dichloria viridis by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Padina deusta, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Sargassum Bacciferum, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Schizonema Smithii, ß torqata, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Desmarestia Liqulata by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Ptilota Plumosa by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Scolopendrium Vulgare by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Sphacelaria Filicina by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Griffithsia Equisetifolia by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Asplenium Braziliense, S. America by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Polysiphonia violacea, ca. 1853 by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Sphacelaria cirrhosa by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "Furcelleria Fastigiata, from")
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.jpg "Dicksonia arborescens, Jamaica by Anna Atkins")
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_-_(MeisterDrucke-1724584).jpg "Spiraea aruncus (Tyrol) by Anna Atkins")
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.jpg "South America by Anna Atkins")
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