Robert Laurie

Robert Laurie (fl. 1750-1795) invented a new method of "Coloured MezzoTinto" in 1776, and The Poa [Tui] was the plate with which he demonstrated the process to the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Based on his drawing of a tui, the skin of which had been brought back to England by Captain James Cook after his first voyage to New Zealand, Laurie won a Bounty of thirty guineas - a very substantial sum at the time.

Laurie's colour printing was done from copper plates; he was sixty years ahead of Baxter's colour prints and almost a century ahead of colour lithography. The plate was later published in Peter Brown's New Illustrations of Zoology, 1776, and is the first published picture of a New Zealand bird. You can read the whole story about this rare early colour print with a NZ connection in a recent article in NZ Art Print News - "Charming story of a very early colour print".