Everlasting Flowers Between the Pages

The Making of Seventeenth-Century Florilegia
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-73513-2
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 9, 390 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm

Reihe: Emergence of Natural History

A florilegium is a picture book filled with many species and varieties of flowers that were widely desired for seventeenth-century European gardens. While many aspects of florilegia seem simple and unimportant from our modern perspective, they grow in complexity and significance when placed into their historical contexts. This colourfully illustrated volume offers new insights into how florilegia functioned as material objects that highlighted and showcased many forms of knowledge, thereby revealing the expertise which the gardeners, compilers, and image-makers must have possessed in order to cultivate the once-living specimens and immortalise the flowers on paper and parchment.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chen, Jessie Wei-Hsuan

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Künstlerische Stoffe, Motive, Themen Künstlerische Stoffe, Motive, Themen: Natur & Tiere (Stillleben, Landschaften etc.)

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Acknowledgements

Notes

Core Examples

List of Figures

Introduction 1 Picture Books of Colourful Flowers from the Seventeenth Century 2 Towards a History of Knowledge 3 Making Seventeenth-Century Florilegia 4 Overview of Core Examples and This Volume

1 Rare and Curious Flowers in the Seventeenth Century 1 Introduction 2 Balancing a Diversity and Variety of Flowers 3 The Rare and the Curious 4 Conclusion

2 Growing Flowers into Rarities and Curiosities 1 Introduction 2 How to Plant According to Seventeenth-Century Florilegia 3 Cultivating Rare and Curious Flowers through Care and Patience 4 Preparing Earth for a Good Planting Ground 5 A Time to Plant and a Time to Enjoy the Blooms 6 Conclusion

3 Picking Flowers for Every Season through Images and Text 1 Introduction 2 Copying Flowers 3 Excerpting Flowers, Extracting Knowledge 4 Putting Flowers in Seasonal Order 5 Conclusion

4 From Describing Flower Colours to Describing Colouring Flowers 1 Introduction 2 Modifying and Reprinting Seventeenth-Century Florilegia 3 Leafing through a Flower Book 4 Describing Flowers and Their Colours 5 Describing How-to Colour Flowers 6 Conclusion

5 Keeping Flowers between the Pages 1 Introduction 2 Preserving Flowers on Paper and Parchment 3 Losing Rareness and Curiousness 4 Capturing Flowers in the Moment(s) 5 Pressing Flowers for Rare and Curious Features 6 Keeping the Collection as a Whole 7 Conclusion

6 Making Colourful Images of Flowers in Life-Size 1 Introduction 2 Picturing Rare and Curious Flowers 3 Drawing Flowers Life-Size 4 Adding Colours to Flowers 5 Conclusion

Conclusion 1 A Customisable Genre Embracing Different Forms of Knowledge 2 A Time to Make

Appendix 1: Making Colours Series

Appendix 2: Planting Pigments ColLAB

Appendix 3: Hortus floridus Iesse, Or, The Imperfect Book of Flowers: A Twenty-First-Century Florilegium

Bibliography

Index of Names, Works, and Flowers

Über Autor(innen)

Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen, Ph.D. (2023), is a historian of art, science, and knowledge currently working at the Huygens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). She has published several articles which reflect her interests in image making and the visual and material culture of natural history.