Overview:

This course surveys botanical illustration from the late medieval period to modern times, exploiting the outstanding collection of illustrated books and related drawings held in the Oak Spring Garden Library. Taking a broadly chronological approach, the development of botanical illustration is traced from medieval manuscript and early printed herbals, through florilegia and scientific plant illustration in the seventeenth century, to the floras and monographs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with firsthand examination of some of the most spectacular color-plate books produced in any field.

Course Instructor:

Roger Gaskell is a retired antiquarian bookseller specializing in scientific medical and technical books, and has worked closely with academic libraries in the U.K. and the U.S. He researches the history and bibliography of illustration processes and has built a replica wooden rolling press for printing intaglio plates which is used for instruction at Rare Book School in Charlottesville. He has taught seminars in book history and scientific illustration at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Since 2013, he has taught a course on illustrated scientific books at Rare Book School and since 2022, ‘600 Years of Botanical Illustration’ at Oak Spring Garden Foundation with Peter Crane.

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