Snapshots of the Past

[Fiddlehead fern] – Antique Print

[Fiddlehead fern] — historic print
[Fiddlehead fern]. Historic print from the Japanese Prints collection.

(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)

Description

Step back in time with [Fiddlehead fern], a historic print rich in period detail. An authentic image from the Library of Congress, it carries the weight of the real historical record.

Choose the framed print, ready to hang the day it arrives, or the unframed print for a frame of your own. It brings character to any room and makes a memorable gift. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Since 2001, Snapshots of the Past has shipped historic prints to tens of thousands of customers around the world.

[Fiddlehead fern]

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What sets this woodcut apart is its subject: a young fern frond curled into the tight spiral that gives the plant its name, fiddlehead. The sheet spans two pages, which suggests it was printed as part of a bound book of verse rather than as a single standalone picture. Its subject headings link it to poetry of the 1790s and to ferns in Japan in the early 1800s, when woodblock printing was the main method for illustrating poems and popular books. Fern shoots were gathered as a spring vegetable in Japan, so a plant like this would have been familiar to its original readers.

Medium1 print (2 pages) : woodcut.
Genredreams and substances
Notes[1798?]
SubjectsPoetry--1790-1800. Ferns--Japan--1800-1810.
SourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Original scan3,679 × 4,584 px · prints to 12 × 15 in at 300 dpi
ReferenceAMZ-SOTP-HPA-222097

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