Botanicals on Black Paper and Mary Delany

It's no secret that I love botanical prints. But I really, really love botanicals with black backgrounds.

Jamie's store, Furbish

MSL

It seems like black botanicals are sort of hard to come by? I searched eBay and etsy and then I moved to Amazon. There I stumbled across this book about Mary Delaney.

It sounds like she was a fascinating society woman and artist in her day (the mid-late 1700's), who, between the ages of 72 and 82, made over 1,000 botanical works constructed almost entirely from cut paper. Can you imagine!?! I am endlessly inspired.

Lucky us, the British Museum allows downloading and printing of their images for personal use! Here are some of Mrs. Delaney's many works.