It’s March, which means Spring is just around the corner, and it’s Women’s History
It’s March, which means Spring is just around the corner, and it’s Women’s History Month. In honor of all that good news, we are sharing some plates from Elizabeth Blackwell’s Curious Herbal. Blackwell was not only a talented artist, but also a keen and resourceful businesswoman. After her husband was sent to debtors prison, she began working on her herbal as a means to support herself and her child, including in it many previously unrecorded plants thus making the volume of great interest to apothecaries and the medical community. Over the course of two years she drew, engraved, and hand-colored all 500 plates. This volume is a 1739 reissue of the 1737 edition, and bears the bookplate of Richard Hopton. The bookplate is inscribed: “Painted by his Wife [i.e., Elizabeth Geers Hopton] & two younger Daughters [i.e., Elizabeth and Frances?].”A curious herbal, containing five hundred cuts, of the most useful plants, which are now used in the practice of physick. Engraved on folio copper plates, after drawings, taken from the life. By Elizabeth Blackwell. London: John Nourse, 1739. -- source link
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