Out of everything in our botanical art collection, these are the 4 pieces I keep coming back to. 2 of them won me over with color, 1 comes with an old myth, and 1 is a classic flower drawn the way old plant books did it best. Each one is finished by hand in our workshop.
1. Amanita Muscaria
I love the red on this one. The fly agaric has the bright red cap and white spots most people picture when they think of a mushroom, and on this 19th century study the color stands out sharply against the pale page. The mushroom is poisonous, and its name comes from an old use: people once set it out to kill flies.
See the Amanita Muscaria replica.
2. Mandrake
This one looks great, and the story behind it is even better. Mandrake has a thick, forked root that can look a little like a human body. In medieval belief, the root screamed when it was pulled from the ground, and the sound killed anyone who heard it. To stay safe, people tied a dog to the plant and let the dog pull it up.
The plate comes from Rembert Dodoens’s Stirpium historiae pemptades sex, printed in Antwerp by Christophe Plantin in 1583. It is a woodcut, 1 of about 1,300 in the book.
See the Mandrake replica.
3. Lemon
I picked this one for the yellow. The fruit is bright, and the white blossoms and small study details keep the page balanced. It comes from Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen, a German book of medicinal plants first published in 1887. Its color plates were printed by chromolithography, a method that used a separate stone for each color.
See the Lemon replica.
4. Rose
Some pieces are simply beautiful, and this is one of them. It shows Rosa centifolia, the cabbage rose, with a full bloom, serrated leaves, and the small details of a botanical reference page. Like the lemon, it comes from Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen.
See the Rose replica.
