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
An independent virtual exhibition and curatorial selection, drawn from open-access heritage scans cleared for commercial use.
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 in three states — young, mature and...
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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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