{"product_id":"large-flowering-sensitive-plant-thorntons-temple-of-flora-vintage-botanical-print","title":"Large Flowering Sensitive Plant · Thornton's Temple of Flora · Vintage Botanical Print","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLarge Flowering Sensitive Plant\u003c\/strong\u003e - a colour-printed, hand-finished plate from Robert Thornton's The Temple of Flora, published in London between 1799 and 1807.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Large Flowering Sensitive Plant\", a plate from Robert Thornton's The Temple of Flora, published in London between 1799 and 1807 and printed in colour from the engraved copper plate, then finished by hand.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe sensitive plant folds its leaves at a touch, a habit that fascinated eighteenth-century botanists and made it a favourite of the hothouse.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Temple of Flora is the most theatrical flower book ever made. Its publisher, the London physician Robert John Thornton, commissioned painters including Philip Reinagle, Peter Henderson and Abraham Pether to set each flower in a landscape of its own - a moonlit river, a mountain pass, a stormy sky - and had the paintings engraved in mezzotint, aquatint and stipple, printed in colour and finished by hand. Issued in parts between 1799 and 1807, it cost Thornton his fortune, and in 1811 he held a lottery to try to recover it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe plates were made by the leading engravers of the day, among them Richard Earlom, Thomas Sutherland and William Ward, working the copper plates in several techniques at once to give the deep, velvety grounds and luminous skies that set the work apart from every other botanical book of its time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTaken from a high-resolution scan of an original plate, with the hand finishing left exactly as Thornton's colourists laid it. Made to order on cotton-fibre archival paper at the one size the plate is cut to, with the mount and frame cut and finished by hand here.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Natural History Room","offers":[{"title":"46cm x 61cm","offer_id":55495152861525,"sku":"THORNTON014-M-46X61","price":56.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0886\/6414\/6261\/files\/gallery-0_4d4db04a-2b29-4362-a574-5b037d1b84b6.jpg?v=1792796381","url":"https:\/\/theposteredit.com\/products\/large-flowering-sensitive-plant-thorntons-temple-of-flora-vintage-botanical-print","provider":"The Poster Edit","version":"1.0","type":"link"}