Joining forces, a great map-making firm and an accomplished botanical illustrator created a wonder of the world.
World of Flowers (1972) from John Bartholomew and Son with illustrations by Barbara Everard
Photo: David Rumsey Map Collection
Are you on a journey this August? Having a staycation? Even better. No suitcase required to travel in David Rumsey’s stunning, searchable, magnifiable, historical and outright gorgeous collection of maps. Go!
Barbara Everard, always working, at a Brighton exhibition of plants and her illustrations
Photo: Barbara Everard Gallery
With delight we feature our favorite: World of Flowers. Famed botanical illustrator Barbara Everard collaborated with John Bartholomew & Son, an equally renowned family firm of map makers in Edinburgh, to produce this wonder in 1972. The map depicts 161 flower species, grouping them by region, with numbers and a key for identification, by both scientific and common names.
Everard began her career painting faux Chinese wallpapers, a training that shows through in this later grouping of floral illustrations.
Photo: Barbara Everard Gallery
This dazzler set us on a research voyage to learn more about Barbara Everard (1910-1990). She sharpened her natural talents as a draftsman by working for Walter and Ernest Thornton-Smith’s interior decorating company. Everard herself later referred to it as “a faked-antique business in Soho Square”: her job was to paint reproductions of antique Chinese wallpaper.
Everard took full advantage of the rather lowly and certainly anonymous task of illustration. By the time she left England for Malaysia, following her husband in his military service there, she possessed the curiosity, the eyes and the skill to take note of its exotic plants. She began to collect and paint them and to “exhibit at flower shows in Singapore, Malacca and Kuala Lumpur.”
On her return to England, Everard’s commissions for plant illustration expanded. She allegedly spent ten years on studies of the wild flowers of Britain, commissioned by John Gurney at the Medici Society. According to wiki, she completed “around 950 plates” but this opus “designed to be a companion to the Bentham & Hooker’s Field Guide, has never been published.” !!
You can find a wealth of her work on this flickr site.
Luscious flowering plants of Tropical and Central Africa by Barbara Everard
Detail: World of Flowers/Donald Rumsey Map Collection
But it’s the map that enthralls us most as a Human Flower Project. David Rumsey’s sidenote reminds us of the 1970s’ awakening interest in whole-earth ecology. He calls the map a “beautiful blend of art and science, showcasing the rich diversity of global flora through detailed illustrations and geographical context. Its combination of cartographic precision and artistic depiction makes it a significant piece in the study of botanical and phytogeographical mapping.”
Its giant cactus obscuring the western third of South America and plume of forget-me-not situated by Antarctica bespeak the “second nature from seven continents” we dream of discovering.
(Sidenote: David Rumsey’s Map Collection inspired the redesign of Human Flower Project earlier this year, under the watchful hands and minds of Honeywick and artist Cat Louis.)
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