Musée Entomologique: Orchid Bee and Passionflower (Chrysantheda frontalis), 1878 – Art Mug

A green orchid bee hangs over the open passionflower, its body a hard metallic green the engraver built out of ruled lines and one wash of colour. The flower carries the picture: a crown of fine filaments, the three styles bent over the centre, and around it the leaves and coiling tendrils of the vine. At the lower left a second, smaller bee works the next blossom.

The sheet is Hyménoptères — Pl. VII from the Musée entomologique illustré, the three-volume natural history that Jules Rothschild published in Paris between 1876 and 1878; this plate belongs to volume three, Les Insectes. The full plate sets four bees on one passionflower — Xylocopa morio above, and three tropical American species: Chrysantheda frontalis, Euglossa romandi and Centris denudans. This mug takes the middle of the plate, the flower itself with Chrysantheda frontalis; the companion mug takes the carpenter bee above it. The fourth product image shows the whole sheet with the printed part marked, so the crop is visible for what it is.

The plates are wood engravings, coloured by hand one copy at a time, so no two are quite alike. What you see is the colouring of one particular copy — the one in the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, photographed anew for this edition at 850 ppi. Nothing has been repainted. The yellowing of the paper has been balanced out and the tone opened so that the engraved line carries on white porcelain; the hatching, the colour and the silhouette are as the sheet has them.

Fine Porcelain — 10 oz. Dishwasher and microwave safe.

From the same sheet — The carpenter bee at the top of the same plate is on its own mug: Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa morio).

Musée entomologique illustré, vol. 3, Les Insectes, Paris: J. Rothschild, 1878, plate Hyménoptères — Pl. VII, central detail. Hand-coloured wood engraving. Digitised from the copy held by the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives; courtesy of Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. Public domain.

Selected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.