Aerides Brookii. Sir William Brooks's Air-plant. Joseph Paxton c1842.

by Paxton, Joseph

Very pretty pink and white orchid antique print.

Original hand-coloured lithograph, drawn and lithographed by Samuel Holden for Joseph Paxton's Magazine of Botany & Register of Flowering Plants, published in London c1842.

Sir Joseph Paxton (1803-1865) was a hugely talented man. Starting as a gardener at 14, with little education, his enthusiasm, ability and application were rewarded by employment when 23 as Head Gardener of the Duke of Devonshire’s Chatsworth Estate - one of England’s finest gardens. Although best known as a landscape gardener, Paxton became both architect and engineer, and built glasshouses for cultivation of plants from other climates. His design for a glass house conservatory at Chatsworth for a giant lily, became the basis of Paxton’s design of the Crystal Palace for London's Great International Exhibition of 1851. Construction of the huge glass and iron building was completed in under 8 months by the radical new idea of regular sized preconstructed materials. Both he and the construction manager were knighted for their grand achievement.

Size is 230 x 155mm (9 x 6 inches).