{"id":16609,"date":"2025-07-29T10:42:59","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T17:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/?post_type=book&p=16609"},"modified":"2025-07-29T10:45:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T17:45:52","slug":"a-celebration-of-flowers-two-hundred-years-of-curtiss-botanical-magazine","status":"publish","type":"book","link":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/book\/a-celebration-of-flowers-two-hundred-years-of-curtiss-botanical-magazine\/","title":{"rendered":"A Celebration of Flowers: Two hundred years of Curtis’s Botanical Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Curtis (1746-1799) was born in Alton, England, about 50 miles southwest of central London.\u00a0 His father was a Quaker tanner.\u00a0 He was apprenticed to his grandfather, the local apothecary, at age 14, but he was more interested in the natural history learned from the groom at the inn next door.<\/p>\n

Curtis moved to London, becoming by his mid-20s a partner in an apothecary practice, but he soon gave this up.\u00a0 At first, he worked at the Chelsea Physic Garden as a \u201cdemonstrator of botany\u201d.\u00a0 Next, he established his own garden in London, open by subscription.\u00a0 He gave lectures to members along with seeds and plants from the 6,000 species of plants he grew.<\/p>\n

\"\"Curtis collected a library of 250 books and was an active writer, publishing papers over a range of natural history subjects.\u00a0 This included an attempt to write the flora of all the plants native within a ten-mile radius of London as he was an early conservationist and concerned with the loss of plant habitats as the city grew.<\/p>\n

The biography of Curtis is at the core of \u201cA Celebration of Flowers.\u201d\u00a0 Author Ray Desmond tells how this effort to produce a London flora was never completed because of repeated delays in production and disinterest from potential buyers, who were more interested in exotic plants than those they regarded as local weeds.<\/p>\n

Curtis was instead encouraged to begin a monthly magazine with illustrations of garden plants, both native \"\"and long-established.\u00a0 The focus was on the quality of the hand-colored prints, including this Echinacea purpurea<\/em> (labeled as Rudbeckia purpurea<\/em>) from the first issue.\u00a0 The text, often borrowed from others, was supportive but not extensive.<\/p>\n

The new publication was well-received.\u00a0 What is now known as \u201cCurtis\u2019s Botanical Magazine<\/a>\u201d began with a circulation of 3,000 each\u00a0month, but was increased to 5,000 because of demand.\u00a0 Most amazing, it is still being published 237 years later!\u00a0 Many of the 20th<\/sup> and all of the 21st<\/sup> century issues are available in the Miller Library.<\/p>\n

A listing of the artists that contributed to \u201cCurtis\u2019s Botanical Magazine\u201d includes most of the best botanical illustrators in Britain.\u00a0 All of them were men until the 1870s, but after that it has mostly been women.\u00a0 The illustrations were almost always drawn from live plants and were hand-colored until 1948.<\/p>\n

At the beginning, 30 people engaged in coloring of the plates printed from this original art.\u00a0 Typically, women and young children were doing this very repetitive work.\u00a0 Ray Desmond notes the \u201cMagazine was hand-colored until 1948, a process in the later years in a factory setting with each worker coloring one part of one plate over and over again, before passing it on to the next worker.<\/p>\n

Of this dreary process, Desmond continues, \u201cWith a relentless pressure of work it was no mean achievement that a creditable level of care and finish was maintained by most colourists.\u00a0 Where there were lapses it should be remembered that the low wages paid did not encourage them to excel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reviewed by: Brian Thompson on February 23, 2024<\/p>\n

Excerpted from the Spring 2024 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Curtis (1746-1799) was born in Alton, England, about 50 miles southwest of central London.\u00a0 His father was a Quaker tanner.\u00a0 He was apprenticed to his grandfather, the local apothecary, at age 14, but he was more interested in the natural history learned from the groom at the inn next door. Curtis moved to London, becoming by his mid-20s a partner in an apothecary practice, but he soon gave this up.\u00a0 At first, he worked at the Chelsea Physic Garden…<\/p>\n

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