Today, 16 March, would have been the birthday of one of the greats – botanist and artist Anna Atkins (1799 – 1871). Atkins is believed to be the first woman to ever create a photographic book, and possibly the first woman to ever take a photograph. Her images are a type of photogram using what …
Part one of a two-part series of tree paintings. Today we feature female painters and then on Monday it’s the men. The aim is to show comparative renderings of these spectacular plants by some of the most renowned female artists ever. Although we have numbered them, this is not a rank, just a way to …
Beautiful old botanical paintings of cacti today from the book: “Iconographie descriptive des cactees, ou, Essais systematiques et raisonnes sur l’histoire naturelle, la classification et la culture des plantes de cette famille“. Which translates (roughly) to: Featured iconography cacti, or systematic and reasoned essays on natural history, classification and cultivation of plants in this family. …
So many free vintage botanical prints via the Biodiversity Heritage Library. It’s just a case of finding the good stuff. Below we uncovered eight well bred Dahlias that are free to use for whatever retro styling you please.
Illustrations of the Natural Orders of Plants with Groups and Descriptions Volume 1 by Elizabeth Twining (1805-1889) was published in London in 1868 by Sampson Low, Son, and Marston. These images are now in the Public Domain. Elizabeth Twinning was part of the eponymously named tea family. Rich, educated and well-connected she reportedly spent her …
Plant Curator often daydreams about spending a few months at this time of year doing a photographic tour of the Californian desert wildflower regions. The ultimate plant lovers road trip would involve going south to north, from desert hotspot to desert hotspot, catching like dominos, the peak blooms in each place. In reality it’s not …
Happy St David’s Day. Where would the UK be without beautiful Wales. To celebrate, we present daffodils and leeks in art. The Welsh for leek is cenhinen and the Welsh for daffodil is cenhinen Pedr which translates to Peter’s leek. It is thought that the latter was adopted as a second national emblem by accident, …