Zygopetalum

Zygopetalum mackayi

A Brazilian orchid, from the longest-running flower book in the world.

Book: Zygopetalum mackayi, pl. 3402, from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine
Artist: after Walter Hood Fitch et al.
Date: 1835
Held by: Wikimedia Commons

Zygopetalum mackayi

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

*Curtis's Botanical Magazine*, begun in 1787 and still published today, introduced Britain to the exotic flowers pouring in from a widening world. This is Zygopetalum, come up out of the Brazilian highlands: green sepals barred with chocolate, and a broad white lip veined in violet like a struck bruise. It smells of hyacinth and it flowers in the cold months, which is why the Victorians could not get enough of it. Plate 3402, drawn for the great serial record of what a garden could be.

See it on your wall

The garden, brought indoors

Zygopetalum 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 Wikimedia Commons — the work is centuries out of copyright (1835).
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 collection