The White Moss Rose

Rosa centifolia muscosa alba

The moss rose in white — the sepals furred like green velvet.

Book: Rosier mousseux à fleurs blanches, from Les Roses
Artist: Pierre-Joseph Redouté
Date: 1817–1824
Held by: Wikimedia Commons

Rosa centifolia muscosa alba

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

The moss rose is a sport of the cabbage rose in which the sepals and stem erupt in a sticky green fur that smells of pine when touched, and the Victorians were besotted with it. This is the white form. The technical marvel of the plate is that Redouté renders a white flower without white — the bloom is built entirely from greys and greens against the paper, which is left to do the work. The whitest flower in the book is the one with no white on it.

See it on your wall

The garden, brought indoors

The White Moss Rose 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 (1817–1824).
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