One of the most valued attributes of a scientific illustration in the eighteenth-century was colour, which at that time was painstakingly applied by hand.
Listen to this episode to hear Georgia discuss the illustrations in two remarkable books - one about plants and one about insects - then head to Kura Heritage Collections Online to browse all the images.
Go to SoundCloud for this Meet a Rare Book episode
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This image of a night-flowering cactus is one of 150 illustrations published to accompany Philip Miller’s The gardener’s dictionary, each printed from a copper plate engraving then individually coloured by hand by a watercolour painter.
Moses Harris drew, engraved and hand coloured all the butterflies, moths, and dragonflies in his book about English insects, including the ones seen here in this fantastical frontispiece.
