Showing 1–12 of 18 results
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Georgiana Molloy: the mind that shines.
Artist/Author: Barry, Bernice.$40.00 Add to cartThis meticulously researched biography tells the extraordinary story of Georgiana Molloy, one of Australia’s first internationally successful female botanists. From the refined beauty of 19th century England and Scotland, to the dramatic landscape of the West Australian coast, Georgiana Molloy: The Mind That Shines gives new insight into the life of this pioneering botanist. Following a swift marriage, Georgiana and Captain John Molloy, a handsome hero with a mysterious past, emigrated to Australia among the first group of European settlers to the remote southwest. Here, despite personal tragedy, Georgiana’s passion for flora was ignited. Entirely self-taught, she gathered specimens of indigenous flora from Augusta and Busselton that are now held in some of the world’s leading herbarium collections. Using Georgiana’s own writings and notes, accompanied by full-colour pictures of some of the stunning plants mentioned throughout, Bernice Barry reveals a resilient, independent woman of strong values, whose appreciation and wonder of the landscape around her become her salvation, and her legacy.
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Brush with Gondwana
Artist/Author: Gooding, Janda.$40.00 Add to cartSeven leading botanical artists are brought together in this beautifully illustrated book. Author Janda Gooding shares the stories behind each artist’s illustrations and reveals a rich and diverse record of Western Australia’s unique flora, fauna and fungi. Illustrations by Margaret Pieroni, Katrina Syme, Philippa Nikulinsky, Pat Dundas, Rica Erickson, Ellen Hickman and Penny Leech.
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Botanical Illustration for Beginners: A Step by Step Guide
Artist/Author: Thurstan, Meriel and Rosie Martin.$45.00 Add to cartOver 50 step-by-step exercises to guide you through the botanical illustration process in simple, easy-to-follow stages.
A unique and exciting approach to botanical illustration, this beginner guide demonstrates everything you need to know about capturing beautiful botanical specimens on paper.
Each exercise guides the reader through a different aspect of botanical illustration, breaking the whole process down into simple, easy-to-follow stages. Whether you are a beginner looking for advice on composition and how to plot out your initial drawings, an experienced artist looking to develop your skills at colour mixing and working with unusual colours, or an old hand looking to capture more challenging and complex textures and shapes, there is something for botanical artists of all levels.
Acclaimed artists Rosie Martin and Meriel thurstan ran the popular botanical painting course at the Eden Project and have filled this fantastically illustrated guide with practical and inspirational worksheets, colour swatches, sketches and stunning finished paintings.
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Little Book of Australian Orchids
Artist/Author: National Library of Australia.$10.00 Add to cartA delightful pairing of orchid images, from the National Library’s collections, with Australian poetry.
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Understanding the Flowering Plants: A Practical Guide for Botanical Illustrators
Artist/Author: Bebbington, Anne L. D.$80.00 Add to cartPlants constantly surprise us as we look at the intricacy of their structure and how they are put together. This fascinating guide explains what flowering plants are and their relationship to other groups of plants. It provides detailed information on structure and function of the different parts of the flowering plant and highlights important features that are often overlooked by artists. With drawings, paintings and photographs throughout, it advises on how to carry out a botanical study and will prove essential reading for botanical artists, photographers and all those wishing to gain a greater understanding of flowering plants.
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Imitation of life: a visual catalogue.
Artist/Author: Kanellos, Tony.$69.00 Add to cartThis sumptuously illustrated book from the Botanic Gardens of Adelaide features 192 apples and 129 pears presented as an album of portraits. Stunning photography captures the life-like detail of this intriguing papier-mache model collection. Showcasing a lost art form and lost fruit varieties, this book details the fascinating story of this rare German model collection. Adelaide’s collection is one of the largest collections to survive and the only one known to exist outside of Europe. After spending 60 years in storage the collection has been reinstated to the permanent display of the Santos Museum of Economic Botany – one of Adelaide’s lesser known treasures.
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Little book of banksias.
Artist/Author: National Library of Australia.$16.00 Add to cartThe banksia is quintessentially Australian. Known and loved for its brush-like flowers and sweet honey nectar, the plant embodies both the beauty and harshness of the Australian landscape. Little Books of Banksias features poems and extracts by some of Australias greatest poets, including Dorothy Hewett, Archie Weller and Douglas Stewart. The artists represented in the publication include Marian Ellis Rowan, Marrianne Collinson Campell, Adam Forster and Ebenezer Edward Gostelow.
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A botanical life: Robert David Fitzgerald.
Artist/Author: Olsen, Penny.$35.00 Add to cartRobert David Fitzgerald (1830-1892) was a successful colonial surveyor who had arrived in Australia in 1856 as a young Irish immigrant of 25. He was employed by the Lands Department in New South Wales and, although he was an exemplary public servant, he was also one of the last of the Victorian-era gentlemen scientists: an avid naturalist, ornithologist and skilled taxidermist.
Fitzgerald devoted his leisure time to botanical illustration and documented the orchids of Australia, publishing his discoveries in his internationally acclaimed work, Australian Orchids. In so doing, he corresponded and engaged with some of the great thinkers of his time, including Ferdinand von Mueller, George Bentham and Charles Darwin.
While being best-known for Australian Orchids, Fitzgeralds lifelong passion for botanical art covered more than orchid species; a large variety of other plants were the subject of his sketches and paintings. Many of these are held in the collections of the National Library of Australia and are featured in A Botanical Life. This book presents a short biography, followed by a portfolio section of more than 100 stunning full-colour images of flowers painted by Robert David Fitzgerald.
Penny Olsen is a research scientist and natural history writer. Based at the Australian National University in Canberra, she is the author of numerous publications including Glimpses of Paradise: The Quest for the Beautiful Parrakeet (2007), A Brush with Birds: Bird Art in the National Library of Australia (2008) and Upside Down World: Early European Impressions of Australias Curious Animals (2010).
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Roses.
Artist/Author: Redoute, Pierre Joseph and James Sowerby.$35.00 Add to cartPart of The Mini Archive series that aims to capture the best of the best of ancient, rare, and significant volumes. Drawing from the roses depicted in Pierre Joseph Redoute’s three volume masterpiece, “Les Roses” (first published in installments between 1817 and 1824) and James Sowerby’s thirty-six volume botanical monolith “English Botany” (1790-1813), this book features 170 of both artists’ magnificent hand-colored engravings in all their blooming glory. A visual index categorises each rose according to name, species, class, and genome. This book is accompanied by a DVD containing all of the images in the book in Tiff and Jpeg format. This book will appeal to horticulturists, collectors, students, teachers, artists and rose-lovers alike, for no one will be able to resist the undeniable beauty of these two artists’ absolutely breathtaking illustrations.
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Botany for the Artist: An Inspirational Guide to Drawing Plants
Artist/Author: Simblet, Sarah.$60.00 Add to cartAn inspirational guide to drawing plants. An intimate understanding of botany will help any artist create vibrant and realistic art. Sarah Simblet’s masterclass provides you with an awareness and appreciation of plants and flowers and shows how to apply that knowledge to your art. Covering every type of plant, from the tiniest mosses and lichens to sumptuous flowers and trees, Sarah shows how to evoke their beauty on your canvas or page. Drawing on the rich history of botanic art and combined with Sarah’s practical drawing classes, over 350 beautiful illustrations and vivid photographs, provide an in-depth look at roots, stems, leaves, flowers and fruits and explain how to create life-like drawings. For anyone wishing to master the art of drawing plants or for all those passionate about plants and how they are portrayed in art.
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The Government House Florilegium
Artist/Author: The Botanical Art School of Melbourne.$60.00 Read moreNO LONGER AVAILABLE. To celebrate the Centenary of Federation of the Australian Commonwealth, in 2001 a group of artists connected to the Botanical Art School of Melbourne saw the occasion and the opportunity to present some botanical treasures of the garden of Government House, Melbourne, in a Florilegium – a thematic collection of botanical art paintings relating to a particular space. With the consent and co-operation of successive Governors and the Government House staff, some 50 artists selected plants from within the gardens. The collection is now held by the State Library of Victoria and is in keeping with the centuries – old European tradition of Florilegium painting, but with a modern and Antipodean flavour as represented in this book.
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Art of Natural History: Illustrated Treatises and Botanical Paintings, 1400-1850
Artist/Author: O'Malley, Therese and Amy R.W. Meyers.$92.00 Add to cartCollection of eleven essays which discuss the relationship between images and text in natural history publications during the years 1400-1850. In particular these essays examine the significance of illustrations as an expression of visual thinking and the way they transmit knowledge.
Studies in the History of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. ‘Making knowledge visible’ is how one sixteenth-century naturalist described the work of the illustrator of botanical treatises. His words reflected the growing role played by illustrators at a time when the study of nature, as a product of the Renaissance, had been assuming new authority in the world of learning. An absorbing exploration of the relationship between image and text, this collection considers how both media aided the development and transmission of scientific knowledge. Presenting images found throughout Europe in works on natural history, medicine, botany, horticulture and garden design, and studies of insects, birds, and animals, the contributors emphasize their artistic as well as scientific value. Illustrators are shown to have been both artists and either naturalists or gardeners, bringing to their work an aesthetic judgment and an empirical observation. Their fascinating images receive fresh, wide-ranging analysis which covers such topics as innovation, patronage, readership, reception, technologies of production, and the relationship between the fine arts and scientific depictions of nature.
