John James Audubon: American Flamingo (Detail), 1838 – Porcelain Art Mug

The bird bends double because the page would not hold it. Audubon printed The Birds of America life-size, on double elephant folio sheets about a metre high, and a standing flamingo is taller than that — so he drew it feeding, head down at the waterline, and the neck became the great curve that runs through the plate.

He worked from birds he had shot himself in the Florida Keys in 1832, and he never got the flock he wanted; the small flamingos on the far shore were added from other studies. The nine little drawings across the top of the sheet are anatomical: bill sections, tongue, foot, the parts a naturalist would want and a painter would not.

The plate was engraved, etched and aquatinted in London by Robert Havell Jr., then coloured by hand, one sheet at a time. It is number 431, one of the last of the 435 plates, issued in 1838 as the work was closing.

This mug carries a detail, not the whole plate: the neck, the head and the black-tipped bill at the water, with the distant birds behind. The complete plate is shown in the last product image. The printable field on a mug is about nine centimetres high; a sheet of almost a metre would shrink to a stamp, so the mug takes the curve the whole composition was built to accommodate.

Fine Porcelain — 10 oz. Dishwasher and microwave safe.

John James Audubon, American Flamingo, Plate 431 from The Birds of America, 1838. Hand-coloured engraving with etching and aquatint by Robert Havell Jr., sheet approx. 97 × 65 cm. University of Pittsburgh Library System, Audubon Collection. Public domain.

Selected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.