The Florilegium
Print detail — every line holds at full size

The Herbal & the Kitchen Garden

The Spiny Golden Star

Pallenis spinosa

From the herbal a woman drew, engraved and coloured herself, to get her husband out of debtors’ prison.

Book
A Curious Herbal
Plate
t. 272
Artist
Elizabeth Blackwell
Date
1737–1739
Held by
Wikimedia Commons
t. 272Pallenis spinosa

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

Elizabeth Blackwell's husband was in debtors' prison. She took lodgings beside the Chelsea Physic Garden, drew the medicinal plants growing there from life, engraved her own copper plates, coloured every impression by hand, and sold the result to apothecaries in weekly parts — five hundred plates over two years. It worked: she paid the debt and got him out. He later went to Sweden and was executed for conspiracy. She drew five hundred plates from life and bought a man out of prison with them.

See it on your wall

The garden, brought indoors

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

The Spiny Golden Star framed on the wall
The Spiny Golden Star framed on the wall
The Spiny Golden Star framed on the wall
The Spiny Golden Star framed on the wall

About this reproduction

  • A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate held by Wikimedia Commons — the work is centuries out of copyright (1737–1739).
  • 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.