 It is my impression (I suppose I ought to measure) that Ursing has stayed conscientiously true to the actual proportions of his sample, with the exception of the rows of fine hair on the stems which seem to have been made fewer and sturdier (presumably for technical reasons and for visibility). Flowers are realistically small in relation to the leaves - which unfortunately doesn't do much for presenting their character in a legible way. He seems to prefer to refrain from contours: outlines are very subdued when he does use them. Leaves are presented at various angles, but are fairly standardized in shape. Digitally nipping a small shoot from the tuft I used the other day for thinking of plants on a white background (I cannot resist using a drop shadow) I can see that my sample is not as uniformly green as his - I don't find any of the really lush ones this early in the season. And so it isn't easy to hit the mark on the colour values... 
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Ursing's Stellaria mediaSvenska Växter, was the first botanical field handbook with full colour illustrations to be published in Sweden. It's purpose was to give Everyman an opportunity to get acquainted with the wild flora with images paving the way to recognition. This great work of a schoolman was received with great enthusiasm. It is also personally relevant for my own path to wild flowers: Morfar owned a copy, which I spent many teenage hours browsing (indoors, with clean hands). It is the yellowed pages of this inherited copy that I have scanned for this comparative investigation.The version here to the left was scanned at a resolution of 300 dpi (with an Epson Perfection 610, using unsharp mask and descreening). It has been kept at the magnified scale resulting from the scan and the background has been cleaned up, without further image processing (no manipulation of the colours recorded by the scanner). When I look at the book page I do not see the fine hairs on the stems, revealed here by the magnification (which is larger than the original colour drawing). The magnified image, through the eye of the scanner, is lighter in its colouring than the impression I get from the page - this, too, brings more clarity to the detail - which, on the other hand, does not fully compensate the aging of the paper. In his 1944 preface Björn Ursing explains how the plants have been portrayed in their natural size, using as large samples as possible of small species and as small samples as possible of large species - resulting occasionally in less typical proportions. For reproduction the images have been scaled down 2.5 X. The Stellaria media shares a page with seven relatives (below) - I'd say that according to the constraints on a field handbook it is not a particularly crowded page, the total impression is nicely airy. Still, each individual sample is not exactly accorded a lot of space. Yet, on the other hand, a composite page like this gives easy access to comparison between the represented species - which is important both for identification purposes, and for the purpose of presenting more samples of the artistic style: the code through which the images have to be read against the actual plants. As I see it, for recognizing the Stellaria media from an image it is more important to be given guidance in navigating the networks of relations centered on this humble Chickweed than to be served with the essence of it (i.e. I don't believe much in capturing general essences at all except through careful attention to particulars, which will still always be rendered through some culturally informed style - 'scuse my philosophizing). Stellaria multimedia.  Illustration (4,5 X 5 cm) by Björn Ursing in his Svenska Växter, Stockholm: Nordisk Rotogravyr (printed 1945) |