Portfolio cover
I. PLUTONIS Temple is the deepest; here Vulcan presides. The walls are black, encrusted with crystal clusters and petrifications, and they glisten here and there of gold and silver.
II. FLORAE Temple where Flora, crowned with garlands, presides. The walls are green, painted with the most glorious flowers in all colors....
III. PAN'S Temple is the innermost and highest, where Nature herself presides. The walls are blood red, hung with unnumerable Epitaphs....
IV. The GRASS in its simple dress reprsents the Common People; they are the most numerous and the most highly esteemed; they manage best even thought [sic] they are trampled and tormented daily.
V. The ROOTS, their mouths, are small thread-like straws with which they suck a watery tincture primarily of humus from out of the earth.
VI. The LEAVES, their wings, with which they fly and move about; to gather strength they breathe the life-giving free air, without which they would fall.
VI. The SEEDS must then be spread far and wide to be sown, which is why some have been given wings, and others have feathers, spirals, hooks, slime....
VIII. NATURE, Queen, Daughter of the Gods, Mistress of all things, is self-taught; works incessantly; does all that is neccesary, though nothing in vain; has her own law; does everything accordings to the two opposites; begins always with the smallest thing, rather secret and very slowly....
IX. TREES, after they have died, stand a long time as hideous spectacles. Dermestides lay their eggs and larvae inside the bark.
X. Putrid water in marshes, puddles and ditches become green, thick, foul and unhealthy.
Rachelle Puryear American/Swedish, b. 1947
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Delicae Naturae is a folio of 10 color etchings inspired by a speech of the same name and delivered by Carl von Linné at Upsala Cathedral in Sweden, in 1772. Von Linne was born Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist who was ennobled for originating the taxonomic classification of plant and animal species. Rachelle’s responses to Von Linné are richly colored abstractions that suggest essences of our natural world. The combination of deeply etched copper with delicate soft-ground textures is amplified by layered and luminous inks giving each a work the feeling of a tactile, shallow-relief. Von Linné’s words are well suited to Puryear’s sensibility. Throughout her distinguished career, the textures and surface structures of nature have been her chief subjects, and she has lived in Sweden for over three decades. Delicae Naturae includes a colophon and sheets that list each etching with a statement by Von Linné’s in English and Swedish.
