Virtual exhibition · 1705–1887

Wondrous Flora

1705–1887

Eight plates to learn to look at plants: etching, mezzotint, stipple, cyanotype, nature-printing, chromolithography.

Virtual exhibition · Independent archive

A curatorial journey through nearly two centuries of botanical illustration (1705–1887), exploring how science, printmaking and artistic sensibility came together to depict the living world.

The plates

Eight plates to explore

From Sowerby's amanita to Köhler's coffee plant, via Thornton, Redouté, Atkins, Merian and Curtis.

PLATE 01

Fly Agaric (Agaricus muscarius)

The fly agaric as a wall plate: red cap, blank paper. Agaricus muscarius (now Amanita muscaria) in three states —...

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PLATE 02

Common Polypody

The plant that prints its own portrait. Plate II of the Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland: left, P. vulgare serratum...

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PLATE 03

Night-Blooming Cereus

Midnight, full moon, a flower that lives but one night. Selenicereus grandiflorus painted by Reinagle on a Pether...

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PLATE 04

French Rose (Rosa gallica)

The summit of French elegance in stipple. Rosa gallica stipple-engraved and watercolour-finished for Les Roses...

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PLATE 05

Dictyota dichotoma Alga

History's first photo book, in Prussian blue. Dictyota dichotoma young and in fruit, cyanotype photogram from...

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PLATE 06

Pineapple with Caterpillar and Butterfly

A pioneering naturalist in Suriname, pineapple and metamorphosis. Ananas comosus with the Philaethria dido life...

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PLATE 07

Venus Flytrap

The carnivorous plant that fascinated the Enlightenment. Dionaea muscipula, plate 785 of the Botanical Magazine...

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PLATE 08

Coffee Plant (Coffea arabica)

The teaching plate of a world economy. Coffea arabica, pl.189 of Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen (1887): flowering...

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