Who was Eric?
Printed on the very first page of the New Zealand fern book is the business stamp of its creator - Mr Eric Craig of Princes St, Auckland. Eric Craig (1829-1923) was a collector, publisher and dealer of natural history and ethnography, who ran a curio business called “The fern and curiosity dealer” near to the old Auckland museum.
The fashion to collect, cultivate and display ferns had spread to New Zealand from Victorian England. From his shop Craig sold (amongst other things) books of pressed ferns, specimens of which he had sourced from a string of suppliers he had in various parts of the country.
In 1888 Craig borrowed a mounting technique first pioneered by Mr H B Dobbie, called the cyanotype process – an early form of photography – to produce illustrations where ferns are presented as white silhouettes on a blue background. These came to be known as the “Blue books” and are now extremely rare. Of 14 copies known to have survived, eleven are in New Zealand libraries, one is in an overseas library and two are in private hands. Some examples of Eric Craig’s work exist in both the New Zealand National library and the Auckland memorial museum.
I am still trying to piece together what became of Eric Craig in his later life, although it would appear he became a well known commercial dealer in Maori artefacts, involved in trade with museums and foreign collectors. According to obituary columns of the time he died 11th April 1923.