Baroque flower etching

The latest item listed on Etsy by the Transylvanian trove is a lovely small print after an original eighteenth-century plate. The central element is a heart-shaped composition of finely engraved flowers, an appealing Baroque decoration.

1772 engraving plate hand pulled in 2014

Under the central floral composition one can see on the left a small city vedutta  and the engraver's name and year: Josephus Vasarhelly (in Latinized Hungarian meaning Joseph from Vasarhellyi=Targu Mures) 1772. According to the artist's name, the city of fortification depicted is Targu Mures, in Transylvania.

Etching, numbered in pencil 9/I. This means it is one of the first prints in the series, with good-quality details.
Dimensions: 7.7 x 8.5 cm (3 x 3.3 inches), not framed, in good condition, reprint made in 2014 by the National History Museum of Transylvania in Cluj-Napoca, Romania after one of the eighteenth century printing plates in its collection. According to the name, the author was a Hungarian master from Transylvania. The 2014 print, the ninth in the series, is hand-pulled in sanguin typographic ink on printmaking paper with the dry stamp of the museum. 

detail with the city vedutta and the marking "sc: Josephus Vasarhellyi" (made by Joseph of Targu Mures)

Historical engravings

Among the fabulous exhibits of the History of Pharmacy Collection I discovered three engraving plates for apothecary labels. Used in the nineteenth century, they are a collage of various such labels, with decorated cartouches, symbols of pharmacy, inscriptions with the name of the pharmacy they were used in (for commercial purposes, naturally) and sometimes the initials of the pharmacists themselves. The plates have been recently used to create new prints, thus revealing the details. Such labels were then cut out of the common sheet, filled in by hand with the details of the respective products, and used individually either to wrap a small number of pills or other types of solid medicine or they were glued to wooden boxes that contained larger quantities of cures.

Detail of one of the plates, with a cartouche inscribed "Apotheke der Kaiserlicher Adler" (the Imperial Eagle Apothecary) - in reference to the double-headed eagle of the Austro/Hungarian monarchy

Detail of a plate with the depiction of the imperial eagle and of pharmaceutical implements.