Monique Flasch and Cassie Vazquez

LIS 712

The Book:

Miller, John. An Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus . 2 vols. London: Robert Faulder, New Bond Street, 1989-1794. Second vol. has a title of An Illustration of Termini Botantici of Linnaeus.

The Author:

John Sebastian Miller was an artist and has become well known for his botanical illustrations. He was born in 1715 in Nuremberg, Germany. He went by the name of Johann

Sebastian Müller until he came to England in 1744 with his brother Tobias who was “an architectural engraver.” (Clayton) He signed his earlier works as J.S. Müller or J.S. Miller but after 1760 just as John Miller. (Hammelmann and Boase) By April of that year – he was working for Arthur Pond, an art dealer who was having a group of engravers work on his Roman

Antiquities project. (Lippincott, Selling Art in Georgian London: The Rise of Arthur Pond) This gave Miller a chance to use some of the experiences he had in Italy. However, in Pond’s shop, he was only one of many artists. He started working for other publishers. In March 1747, he worked on “an allegorical piece featuring medallion portraits of the royal family and dedicated

‘To all True Britons, Lovers of Liberty and the Present Succession’ celebrated the survival of the

Hanoverian regime.” Soon he was publishing and advertising his own work. He did engravings for Jonathan Swift, John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regain’d and “he engraved twenty-six plates of furniture for Thomas Chippendale’s Director in 1753 and then he worked for the University of Oxford on engravings of the Arundel marbles (1763–4).” (Clayton)

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By 1760, Miller was becoming well known as a designer and engraver of historical and portrait prints. John Boydell commissioned him to engrave for his Collection of Prints Engraved after the most Capital Paintings in England. “Miller was an enthusiastic champion of the virtues of British life. In 1780, he painted, exhibited, engraved, and published a print of The

Confirmation of Magna Carta by Henry III, reminding his adopted compatriots that ‘it is this Law that constitutes an Englishman, and as such that thou art distinguished from all men on Earth’.”

(Clayton) But his passion was for botany. His father had been a gardener at the Stromerischen

Garten in Nuremberg. He did engraving for Phillip Miller who was the gardener at the Physic

Garden at Chelsea. (Rougetel) John Miller did the “plates for Philip Miller's Figures of the most beautiful, useful and uncommon plants, described in the gardener's dictionary (1758). In 1759, with Philip Miller's support, he proposed ‘one hundred prints, exhibiting a curious collection of

Plants and Insects’, but this project failed after ten plates had been published.” (Clayton)

While working for Phillip Miller, John Miller was also an artist ‘on call’ for Dr. John

Fothergill, a Quaker physician, who was friends with Dr. Benjamin Franklin and a supporter of botanical expeditions in America. At his estate in Essex, Fothergill had a five acre garden and grew thousands of species including some 3400 species of conservatory plants. (DeLacy) He was

“not content with growing the plants and giving dried specimens to Sir Joseph Banks and others…Fothergill employed artists to make drawings on vellum when each plant was the perfection of bloom. He kept three or four such artists constantly occupied and the beautiful paintings which he obtained; it is said (were) 2000 in number.” (Fox)

Miller’s book Illustration Systematis Sexualis Linnaei (An Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus) was first produced in 1770. “It was completed in parts in 1776. The first two

2 numbers were sent to Linnaeus in December 1770 and received his enthusiastic endorsement.”

(Clayton) “Linnaeus himself considered them ‘more beautiful and more accurate than any that had been since the world began” (Sitwell and Blunt) “In 1770 the naturalist, John Ellis, wrote to

Linnaeus: " . . . there is a valuable work now carrying on upon your system by Mr. John Miller, a

German painter and engraver, under the direction of Dr. Gowan Knight, of the British Museum.

(Knight was a friend of Fothergill’s) This will make your system of botany familiar to the ladies, being in English as well as Latin. The figures are well drawn, and very systematically dissected and described." (Cincinnati Museum Center) “The plates, arranged after the Linnaean classes and orders, are mostly of common plants, including the bramble and the sunflower. Full dissections of fruit and flower are included in most of the engraved hand colored prints, but again the focus is on the flower with other aspects included arbitrarily.” (Saunders)

In the Folio edition, “the plates were issued both coloured and uncoloured, the latter, for scientific purposes, were published with letters, the former for aesthetic reasons were published without. The work appeared in twenty parts from 1770 to 1777 and was sold to 85 subscribers (who ordered 105 sets.) (Christie's) “Miller published an octavo edition of this work in 1779.” (Clayton) The octavo edition is the copy we will be looking at. In the preface, he says the reason for the new edition in English was “I have had numerous applications, and very persuasive arguments have been urged, by the real lovers of the science for my publishing that illustration in the present form; which, betides the very moderate price to recommend it to students in general, being published in octavo, was thought moil convenient for the pocket, when they were hiring the gardens, or ranging the fields.” (Miller) He also mentioned that there will be more common plants depicted and less “of the more rare and curious Exotics.” (Miller)

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Miller had twenty-nine or twenty-seven children (depending on the source you look at

(Clayton) or (Hammelmann and Boase)) and three wives. Two of his sons, John Frederick and

James followed him in his artistic career. “It was the elder Miller's acquaintance with Joseph

Banks that John Frederick was taken into Banks’ employment. He drew many of the artifacts collected on James Cook's Endeavour voyage of 1768–71 and both brothers were to have accompanied Banks on Cook's second voyage. When that plan foundered, John Frederick accompanied Banks on his travels to the Orkneys, Hebrides, and Iceland in 1772; his drawings are now in the Natural History Museum, London.” (Clayton)

John Miller died in London in 1792. His publications and his artwork live on. He has several pieces in the National Portrait Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural

History Museum and the British Library. And his books are in botanical collections throughout the world. But perhaps he never dreamed of how his work would be connected to the exploration of America. Out of the eight books that they carried, Meriwether Lewis and William

Clark took an octavo two volume edition of An Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus and

An Illustration of the Termini Botanici of Linnaeus with them on the Corps of Discovery

Expedition from 1804–1806. (Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc.) Since it was considered the

Peterson’s Field Guide of the 18th century, it would have been interesting to see how it helped

Lewis with his observations. “Apparently no one has yet analyzed Lewis’ botanical entries to correlate them to Miller’s books.” (Fisher)

In our copy of John Miller’s Sexual System, the first volume is published in 1794, by the bookseller Robert Faulder. His shop was located on 42 New Bond Street, a fashionable shopping district in London during Georgian days and today. He published several book catalogs from

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1783-97 and was listed as bookseller to the King in 1799. (Maxted) The second volume - An

Illustration of the Termini Botanici of Linnaeus – has a publication date of 1789 and is listed as being sold from the author’s house at 10 Vauxhall Walk in Lambreth.

There are other differences to our copies of the volumes. The first volume has 106 pages and is concentrated on the floral elements of the taxonomic feature, namely, the stamens and pistils as the reproductive parts of flowers. The frontispiece (ours is uncolored) has

Flora the goddess of flowers and Ceres the goddess of grains and harvest sitting together “each with symbols of her domain.” There is a passage from Genesis 1:12 - “And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.” (Holy Bible King James Version) There are other female figures in the scene such as Minerva and Britannia. Carl Linnaeus’ portrait is in profile at the top of the page. (Shteir) The title page has an illustration of cherubs who are holding a with Luke 12:27 on it – “Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

(Holy Bible King James Version) The second volume has 86 pages and covers the botanical terms of Linnaeus. The title page is unremarkable except for the letter “N” being printed backwards.

The Paper:

An Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus (volume one) and An Illustration of the

Termini Botanici (volume two) by John Miller has many characteristics that helps identify the papermaker and paper used to create these works. Paper is “the main staple of any book”

(Carter 159), and the examination of the two volumes ascertain that they are in octavo format.

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The paper has vertical chain-lines and there are very descriptive and countermarks that allowed us to identify the papermaker of the two volumes. Furthermore, it appears that two different types of paper were used in the books. The illustrations, which were engraved by copper-plates, seems to have been printed on woven paper; whereas, the text was printed on , the paper most known during the time period of these two volumes.

The papermaker assumed to have made the paper for these two volumes was James

Whatman II (1741). The identification of the papermaker was found in the countermark (“1794

WHATMAN”) that can found on many pages in both volumes. Through research it became aware that the Whatman’s were well established papermakers in England. James Whatman I

(1702) was the first to enhance business at Turkey Mill, and his son took over after he died. James Whatman II was still alive during the of Miller’s books; however, he allowed his protégé, William Balston to oversee his operation from 1790-1794 before Turkey

Mill was sold. Even though, it can be speculated that James Whatman II’s business did not make the paper. The countermark detects the date 1794, and research shows that Turkey Mill was sold in 1794. The Whatman countermark was still used by others after Turkey Mill was sold, but these two volumes could likely be some of the last works printed at Turkey Mill while Whatman

II was still owner.

There is a vast amount of information found on the Whatmans. Both father and son were very important in their times that it becomes overwhelming to narrow down the many accomplishments they had. The focus for the remaining of this paper is going to be based on how the Whatmans began papermaking and how they made an impact in eighteenth-century

England. The elder James Whatman was said to have learned the skill of papermaking in

Holland. During this time, Holland was well known for its paper, and one papermaker of

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Holland, Lubertus van Gerrevink (LVG), was said to be James Whatman I’s mentor (Churchill

40).

There are many different opinions on how the elder Whatman obtained Turkey Mill, but research shows that in 1740 James Whatman I married Ann Harris. Ann Harris was the widow of

Richard Harris, owner of Turkey Mill, and he left Turkey Mill to his wife (“About the ”

1). In the article “Who were the Whatmans?” it asserts that Robert Harris was a good friend of

James Whatman I. Also, the article expresses that the elder Whatman “learnt the basic features of papermaking as a boy in the Harris mill” (1). Whatman I had his own near Turkey

Mill in Maidstone but took over Turkey Mill in 1740 after marrying Ann Harris. The elder

Whatman then began to create one of the most popular paper mills of its times until his death in 1759.

Turkey Mill was well known during its time for papermaking and it still exists today, even though now it used by various businesses not known for producing paper. Located in Kent,

England, Turkey Mill was the largest British paper mill during its time. In addition, Turkey Mill was:

one of three mills operated by Whatman in the nation’s most celebrated papermaking region, where large-scale paper milling had a pedigree that went back to the sixteenth century. Fine papermaking was a highly competitive business, marked by recurrent enterprise and invention, and a traditional, integral part of Kent landscape that, due to its closeness to both London and the Continent, had long experienced high productivity and continual improvement. Turkey Mill had been running since the late seventeenth century, and under James Whatman I had become a showpiece, with a fine house, gardens, and orchards adjacent to the mill. James Whatman II, his son, extended the enterprise by purchasing the Vinters estate in 1783, adding another paper mill, and converting the manor house into a new family residence. (Daniels 25)

Kent, England was a perfect place for papermaking. The region was surrounded by many rivers that would power the equipment in the mills and great for transportation (e.g. materials and

7 finished paper). For Turkey Mill, it was located on the River Len; however, the river water was

“too polluted for making the white paper” (Harris 63). Instead, clear spring water was used. To obtain this, the spring water was “supplied from a ground-water aquifer” and this was used to make the paper. In addition, “[t]he water was filtered through the limestone Hythe beds, which resulted in crystal-clear water that was slightly alkaline from the calcium salts absorbed from the limestone. This percolation of the water through the lime filtered out impurities, producing an ideal source of water for making white paper” (Harris 63). The production of Turkey Mill would slow in the late 1700s. In 1790, James Whatman II suffered a stroke, and while Whatman

II never fully regained full health, there were many other occurrences affecting the paper mill industry during this time. The French Revolution was going on, and the paper industry was expensive, allowing Whatman II to sell Turkey Mill in 1794 at the age of 53 (Harris 87).

James Whatman II did not fully take over his father’s business until two years after his father’s death; Whatman II was only 21 when he began. James Whatman II had come up with many new ideas for the mill that would continue to increase Turkey Mill’s reputation. Not long after Whatman II took over, in 1764 he began to experiment. “Till chemical bleaching was invented in 1785, only white rags could be used to make white , and even so the papers had marked yellow tinge; to cure this, he thought of mixing a blue with his ” (Balston 21).

Whatman II would continue to experiment throughout his career that would make an impact in the printing world. The like father, like son, the elder Whatman also liked to experiment, and he was known to have invented wove paper; and his Whatman II would continue to experiment with creating this new form of paper after his father’s death. Four years after selling his mill in

1794, Whatman II committed suicide on March 17, 1798 at age 57; and this was an odd

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“coincidence that Whatman chose to take his own life at the same age his father died” (Harris

87).

The idea for a new type of paper was not experimented with until the middle of the eighteenth-century. James Whatman I began the invention of wove paper but it would take years until it was mastered. The elder James Whatman worked with John Baskerville, a famous

English printer. Baskerville wanted paper with a “smoother surface for printing his fine serif type” (Harris 79), and so the idea of wove paper was developed. During the time, the process of wove paper “was made on a mould that evolved from the antique or single-faced laid mould.

The laid wire cover was replaced with a fine woven wire cloth, which created a smooth- surfaced paper” (Harris 79/81). A lot of modifications would take place in the process of creating wove paper and one of the “first documented datable use of wove paper occurred in

John Baskerville’s publication Publii Virgilii Maronis Bucolica, Georgica, et Aeneis, printed in

Birmingham in 1757” (Harris 83). The whole volume of Baskerville’s publication was not printed on wove paper. Due to cost or limited supply, the publication could not use wove paper throughout. The same could probably be said for John Miller’s two volumes, because as stated before, it appears both works have a combination of laid and wove paper. The paper that the illustrations were printed on have less shadowing then the paper the text was printed on. Not long after inventing this new type of paper, the elder James Whatman died; which left his son to further modify wove paper. James Whatman II presented another new type of wove paper,

“one with a ‘watermark ruling’ that was a precursor to our lined writing paper designed to help the user write in neat parallel rows” (Harris 85). Whatman adopted this technique in 1774.

While the Whatmans were known for many things including wove paper, they were also known by their watermarks and countermarks. Watermarks are known to have made an

9 appearance in European paper during the thirteenth century or maybe earlier. Watermarks and countermarks are trademarks that can help identify the papermaker, as they did in Miller’s two volumes. The “Whatmans, Balstons, and Hollingworth brothers appropriated the following

Continental watermarks for their own product lines: crowned shields, post horns, fleur-de-lis,

Britannia, Pro Patria, lion passant, and L.V.G (initials standing for L. van Gerrevink, of North

Holland)” (Harris 133-134). Of the following stated, crowned shields, fluer-de-lis, and L.V.G. watermarks were found throughout Miller’s two volumes. In volume one, the fluer-de-lis watermark can be found, for example, on the upper right corner on the preface page, pages 1,

2, 12, and 58. In addition, the heraldic shield can be seen with initials underneath on pages 3, 4, and 10 of volume one. While looking at the heraldic shield, it appears that the initials underneath the shield indicate the letters VC. However, research shows that the initials are

L.V.G. These initials were known to be used because L. van Gerrevink was said to be the mentor of the elder James Whatman. The whole image of the watermark appears as the flue-de-lis is above the heraldic shield, as image to the right shows. To identify their paper, the Whatmans used countermarks, which were made the same way as watermarks. “[C]ountermarks in England could include name, place, dates, and occasionally, mill numbers” (Harris134). The countermark that idenified Whatman in Miller’s two volumes was “1794 WHATMAN.” There are a variety of countermarks identifying the Whatmans, some include: “TURKEYMILL” or “J WHATMAN” (Harris 137).

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Bibliography for Part 1 Beaux Arts. 2011. 16 November 2011 .

Blunt, William. The Art of Botanical Illustration. Third. London: Collins, 1955.

Christie's. Christie's Sale 7576 Lot 37. 30 April 2008. 15 November 2011 .

Cincinnati Museum Center. From Seed to Flower: Selected Books from the Cornelius J. Hauck Botanical Collection. 6 December 2006. 15 November 2011 .

Clayton, Timothy. "Miller, John Sebastian (1715–1792)." 2004. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. 18 November 2011 .

DeLacy, Margaret. "Fothergill, John (1712–1780)." October 2007. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. 15 November 2011 .

Fisher, John W. "Books of the Expedition." Corps of Discovery. 10 November 2011 .

Fox, Dr. Hingston. Dr. John Fothergill and His Friends. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1919.

Hammelmann, Hanns and T.S.R. Boase. Book Illustrators in Eighteenth-Century England. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975.

Holy Bible King James Version. Peabody, MA: Henderson Bibles, 2006.

Lazarus, Maureen H. and Heather S. Pardoe. "Bute's Botanical Tables: Dictated by Nature." Archives of Natural History (2009): 277-298.

Lippincott, Louise. "Pond, Arthur (bap. 1701, d. 1758)." 2004. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. 15 November 2011 .

—. Selling Art in Georgian London: The Rise of Arthur Pond. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983.

Maxted, Ian. The London Book Trades 1775-1800. Kent, England: Wm Dawson & Sons Ltd., 1977.

Miller, John. An Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus. 2 vols. London: Robert Faulder, New Bond Street, 1989-1794.

Rougetel, Hazel Le. "Miller, Philip (1691–1771)." 2004. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. 14 November 2011 .

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Saunders, Gill. Picturing Plants: An Analytical History of Botanical Illustration. Second. Chicago and London: KWS Publishers, 2009.

Shteir, Ann B. "Flora primavera or Flora meretrix? Iconography, Gender and Science." Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture. Ed. Jeffrey S. Ravel and Linda Zionkowski. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 2007. 147-168.

Sitwell, Sacheverell and Wilfred Blunt. Great Flower Books 1700-1900. New York: Atlantiv Monthly Press, 1990.

The Linnean Society of London. The Linnean Society of London - Linnaean Correspondence . 15 November 2011 .

Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc. "Books Lewis and Clark Took on the Expedition." Thomas Jefferson Monticello. 16 November 2011 .

Bibliography for Part 2

About the Watermark. 9 October 2011. Web.

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Balston, Thomas. James Whatman Father and Son. New York: Garland, 1979.

Carter, John and Nicolas Barker. ABC for Book Collectors. 8th ed. New Castle: Oak Knoll, 2004.

Churchill, W.A. Watermarks in Paper: in Holland, England, France, etc., in the XVII and XVIII Centuries

and their Interconnection. Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger & Co., 1967.

Harris, Theresa Fairbanks and Scott Wilcox. Papermaking and the Art of Watercolor in Eighteenth-

Century Britain. Essays contributed by Stephen Daniels, Michael Fuller, and Maureen Green.

New Haven and London: Yale Center for British Art and Yale University, 2006.

Hunter, Dard. Papermaking: the History and Technique of an Ancient Craft. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

1947.

“The Whatmans and Wove Paper: What is Wove Paper?” 9 October 2011. Web.

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“The Whatmans and Wove Paper: Who were the Whatmans?” 9 October 2011. Web.

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