Synaphea

Synaphea dilatata

A Western Australian shrub, drawn with the patience of an anatomist.

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

Synaphea dilatata

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

One of the great sheets from the Flinders voyage: a Western Australian shrub of the protea family, drawn entire and then taken apart along the margins — the flower opened, the anther isolated, the seed shown from two sides. Bauer was not illustrating a plant so much as arguing about it, and the argument is conducted in a hand so exact that botanists still work from these drawings two centuries on. The plate is scanned here past seventeen thousand pixels. Botanical drawing at its height is not decoration. It is evidence.

See it on your wall

The garden, brought indoors

Synaphea 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