This complete reproduction of Elizabeth Twining’s two-volume catalog from 1868, Illustrations of the Natural Orders of Plants was reproduced in its entirety and enhanced with interactive descriptions, diagrams, and posters.
Each of the 160 illustrations was restored from the original scans to be as colorful as the plants they depict, which involved carefully adjusting the colors and cleaning up spotting and other other markings on the scans to produce clean images without altering the underlying original illustrations. After restoration, every plant that was referenced in the original illustrations’ legends was carefully outlined to create hotspots that correspond with the accompanying descriptions. This process alone took one to four hours per image and the entire project took four months to complete. Posters were designed as a tribute to Elizabeth Twining’s dedicated efforts to illustrate the natural orders of plants in ways that invite exploration.
Explore project How it was made
Press
- See the rare drawings of a 19th-century female botanist, remastered for the first time, Jul 11, 2019, Fast Company
- Due volumi di un libro illustrato di botanica dell?800 restaurati e messi online in un sito interattivo (English translation), Jul 15, 2019, Frizifrizzi
- Modern reproduction of an 1868 catalog of flower illustrations, Jul 15, 2019, FlowingData
- 10 significant visualisation developments: January to June 2019, Aug 14, 2019, Visualising Data
- Interview: Designer Restores Beloved 19th-Century Botanical Catalog and Places It Online, Sep 2, 2019, My Modern Met
- 畫下世界各地 700 多種植物！19 世紀「植物圖鑑」開放線上閱覽，同步推出「數位修復版」 (English translation), Sep 5, 2019, Shopping Design
- Jeśli kochacie botaniczne ilustracje, ten artysta ma dla was prezent: odtworzył cyfrowo i udostępnił online katalog z XIX wieku (English translation), Sep 7, 2019, F5
- Best of the visualisation web... July 2019, Sep 30, 2019, Visualising Data
- Illustrations of the Natural Orders of Plants by Elizabeth Twining (1868), Jan 6, 2021, Kottke
