These lovely blooms are scanned from Special Collections' copy of a rare horticultural journal of the early nineteenth century called The Floricultural Cabinet and Florists' Magazine. Joseph Harrison, head gardener for Wortley Hall in Sheffield, founded several British gardening magazines in the 1820s and 1830s in response to rising interest in the hobby of flower cultivation and fine gardening. The Floricultural Cabinet was one of the most successful of these publications and ran for over twenty-five years, finding many upper-class Victorian readers who admired the high quality of its articles and illustrations. Though the periodical is rather small in size, these full-page, hand-colored lithographs and engravings are stunning even to the modern reader. Produced before the dawn of the chromolithograph later in the century, these watercolors make The Floricultural Cabinet one of the high spots in the history of botanical illustration.
