Required Reading: The Temple of Flora - Gardenista
I am one of those annoying people who says, “Don’t buy me a present, seriously, this is not a big birthday–I mean it.” Of course, I don’t mean it. This explains how I came into possession earlier this month on my birthday please don t rush out and buy me a retroactive gift I mean it of the life s work of... ...an 18th century Englishman who hired some of the best painters of his age to create a set of feverishly haunting giant size botanical illustrations that he dubbed theatrically The Temple of Flora This is a huge box I hope you didn t spend a lot of money I lied as I ripped off the wrapping paper... ...and found a heavy green cardboard box holding a portfolio of 33 hand colored images of lilies tulips passion flowers roses and the like Photographs by Michelle Slatalla except where noted. It was no accident that the luminescent white lily was posed, floating, against a romantic backdrop of what appears to be Roman ruins. Thornton a medical doctor obsessed with the earlier work of Carl Linnaeus intended his collection of romantic... ...botanical illustrations as an homage to the Swedish botanist who created the first coherent system for naming plants The Taschen prints are coffee table size — or bigger. Out of print but still available, the Taschen reprint of The Temple of Flora can be found online at Amazon, with prices for a new set ranging from $219 to $659 (my birthday present came to me via an estate sale). Photograph (Above, L) courtesy of Kaufman Mercantile. Last year, a set of six original engravings from The Temple of Flora sold at auction for $16,250 at Christie’s. Eighteenth century romanticism informed Thornton’s view and, in retrospect, perhaps clouded his judgment.