The Alchemical Cabinet
Ripley’s Wheel
All the secrets of the treatise, on one wheel.
- Work
- from Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum
- Maker
- After George Ripley; engraved by John Goddard for Elias Ashmole
- Date
- 1652
- Source
- Science History Institute, Philadelphia · scan: Wikimedia Commons
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source plate — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
Ring inside ring of tiny lettering fills a great wheel, with small circles set around its edge and a heading above: here followeth the figure containing all the secrets of the treatise, both great and small. The wheel sums up George Ripley's Compound of Alchymie, a fifteenth-century English poem, with its planetary spheres and its recipes. Elias Ashmole printed it in London in 1652 in his Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, and John Goddard engraved the figure. It is a whole book of instructions folded into one round page.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
Ripley’s Wheel printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.
About this reproduction
- A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate — from Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (1652), held by Science History Institute, Philadelphia · scan: Wikimedia Commons. The work was published before 1931 and is centuries out of copyright.
- Printed to order on 200gsm EMA matte art paper; framed pieces sit behind acrylic, no mat.
- Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
- Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
- If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.
Why our plates cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans available, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the emblem line, the letterpress bite, the registration of colour — on stock made to outlive its owner.
