About this collection

Original Botanical Prints presents the botanical prints of Bartele Gallery, a dealer in antique maps and prints in Langweer, the Netherlands. Bartele Gallery is the seller of every piece on this site.

For four hundred years plants were known from paper. Herbals described the plants a physician needed, florilegia celebrated the flowers of princely gardens, the botanical magazines recorded each new plant as it reached Europe, and the pomologies named the fruit in the orchard. Engravers, lithographers and teams of colourists made those books, sheet by sheet.

The prints here come from them. Every one is a period original, printed in its own day and often coloured by hand. The date given is the date the sheet was printed. Where a date is uncertain, we say so. Many plates are offered as matched sets from one book, because botanical prints are at their best hung together.

The seven drawers

• Flowers: Lilies, roses, rhododendrons, wildflowers and alpines.
• Orchids: Tropical and wild orchids, from Reichenbachia to Müller.
• Fruit & vegetables: Pears, apples, grapes, citrus and tropical fruit.
• Herbs, spices & useful plants: Medicinal herbs, spices, coffee, tobacco and grasses.
• Trees, palms & ferns: Trees, palms, ferns, mosses and lichens.
• Mushrooms & fungi: Boletes, agarics, morels and truffles.
• Gardens: Botanic gardens, estates and garden temples.

Questions about a print: info@originalbotanicalprints.com.