Anonymous
1866

Antique Birds Eye View of the Mississippi Basin

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Birds Eye View of the Basin of the Mississippi

DESCRIPTION: SOLD

Unusual post-war antique wood engraving of a birds eye view of the Mississippi basin with numerous rivers, roads and cities identified by name. With this image the viewer looks at the landscape from a new perspective with South at the top of page. Attractive.

"Wood engraving is a printmaking and letterpress printing technique, in which an artist works an image or matrix of images into a block of wood. Functionally a variety of woodcut, it uses relief printing, where the artist applies ink to the face of the block and prints using relatively low pressure. By contrast, ordinary engraving, like etching, uses a metal plate for the matrix, and is printed by the intaglio method, where the ink fills the valleys, the removed areas. As a result, wood engravings deteriorate less quickly than copper-plate engravings, and have a distinctive white-on-black character." (Source: INTERNET )

Coverage extends from St. Louis to the Gulf of Mexico and beyond with dozens of cities and town noted including Austin, Texas; Key West, Florida; New Orleans, Louisiana; Brownsville, Galveston, Montgomery, Jackson, Knoxville, Charleston, Savannah, Vicksburg, Natchez and many more.

Includes the Mississippi River, Missouri River, Ohio River, Arkansas River, Savannah River, Chattahoochee River, Escambia River, and the upper Gulf of Mexico. Published in 1866 by Harpers for the "Pictorial History of the Civil War" part 1.

The illustration and quotation on this trade card were not unique to John Cosgrove but rather part of a stock design widely used by 19th-century printers who specialized in producing humorous or sentimental advertising cards. Lithographers commonly kept catalogs of ready-made comic scenes—like this seaside mother-and-child vignette with the line “It’s a wise child that knows its own mother at the sea side”—which merchants could customize by adding their own business imprint below. In this case, the printer simply inserted Cosgrove’s name, trade description, and Poydras Market address into the blank advertising panel at the bottom, allowing a small New Orleans fish dealer to benefit from professionally printed imagery at a fraction of the cost of commissioning original artwork.

CREATOR: Anonymous

PUBLICATION DATE: 1866

GEOGRAPHIC AREA: United States

BODY OF WATER: Mississippi River

CONDITION: Good. Slightly age toned as typical for paper of the era.

COLORING: None

ENGRAVER: N/A

SIZE: 9 " x 14 "

ITEM PHYSICAL LOCATION: 0

PRICE: $

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