All 435 plates of John James Audubon's ''Birds of America'' are back together again, looking even more exquisite and astonishingly detailed than when Union College's President Eliphalet Nott purchased them from the artist for $1,000 in gold in 1844.
The ''double elephant folio'' plates, which measure 26-by-39 inches, represent the pinnacle of artistic achievement for America's foremost wildlife artist. Created with a labor-intensive engraving and aquatint process, they are a rare and valuable collection of 19th-century avian art.
The intriguing backstory to the Audubon birds at Union includes a theft in 1971, arrest of the thief and recovery of the plates following an FBI sting. Now, with a just-completed $50,000 restoration project, the plates have been removed from their bound leather volumes and mounted separately.
Union put a sampling of Audubon's birds on public display for the first time recently at the Schaffer Library on the Schenectady campus. They are a wondrous sight to behold, especially since the thief's blood stains — he cut himself breaking a window to gain entry — have been professionally removed, and tears and rips sustained when he cut them out of the binding with a box cutter during the heist have been repaired.
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