The striking photogravures below are cut from the first, 1928 edition of Karl Blossfeldt's classic Urformen der Kunst.  Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932) taught sculpture at the Royal School of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin.  He devised a camera that was capable of taking greatly magnified closeup photos of plants.  He would then use these photos in the classroom as models of organic form.  After more than 30 years of  nature study, Blossfeldt, at the age of 63, published some of his photos in Urformen der Kunst (Archetypal Forms of Art) and quickly achieved international celebrity.  The work has been reprinted numerous times, but the plates offered below are from the first edition.

Note: The Blossfeldt photogravures typically have a bluish or greenish tinge.   The images below have been scanned in greyscale, so that these tints are not evident.  The paper itself is mildly age toned to a pleasing ivory; consequently, the margins are not quite as white as the scans would suggest.   The reverse side of each plate is blank. The photogravures have a clean, fresh appearance with little evidence of handling.