Dasypogon

Dasypogon bromeliifolius

A pineapple-bush of the sand plains, held to the light.

Book: Illustrationes Florae Novae Hollandiae
Artist: Ferdinand Bauer
Date: 1801–1806
Held by: David Rumsey Map Collection · via Internet Archive and Wikimedia Commons

Dasypogon bromeliifolius

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore, down to the stipple.

Size

$29.00

The story

A tufted plant of the Western Australian sand plains, its leaves stiff as blades and its flower head a tight grey knot. Bauer's genius was to make a plant like this — not beautiful in the way a rose is beautiful — completely absorbing, by drawing it with such attention that the eye has no choice but to follow. Joseph Banks called him the greatest botanical artist who ever lived, and Banks had seen everyone. Attention is the whole technique. There is no other one.

See it on your wall

The garden, brought indoors

Dasypogon printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

About this reproduction

A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate held by David Rumsey Map Collection · via Internet Archive and Wikimedia Commons — the work is centuries out of copyright (1801–1806).
Printed to order on archival cotton-rag stock, pigment inks rated 100+ years (inscribed pieces and atelier bouquets are set by hand and printed to order).
Colour-managed to the source scan: the hand-colour is the colourist’s, not ours. We correct nothing and invent nothing.
Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our plates cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans in existence, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the stipple that makes a petal look soft, the wash of the hand-colourist, the veins of the leaf — on stock made to outlive its owner. A poster reproduces the picture. This reproduces the plate.

From the same hand