Nature printing is a unique and historic way of taking prints from natural objects, which creates images of great verisimilitude and detail. In Europe, nature printing became popular with herbalists in early Renaissance Italy as a way to record medicinal and useful plants.

This illustrated talk introduced the colourful history of nature printing with emphasis on a later refined method invented in Vienna in 1853. Brought to London by a Fleet Street printer, the introduction of this new form of representation and the curious images it produced, is an unexpected tale of industrial espionage, ferns and roofing lead…

The Linnean Society of London