mrs. delany


 
 
 
Mary Delany's 'paper mosaicks' - highly accurate botanical portraits in paper collage. She started making them when she was 72, and made nearly a thousand before her eyesight failed ten years later. According to reports, she worked with live specimens as models, and built the images piece by piece, without any preliminary sketches.

From top:
Pancratium maritinum: Sea Daffodil. 1775. Paper collage.
Passiflora laurifolia: bay leaved. 1777. Collage with over 230 paper petals in the bloom. 
Physalis (Winter Cherry). c. 1772 - 1782. Paper collage with skeleton of a physalis pod case.
Crinum Zeylanicum: Asphodel Lily. 1778. Paper collage.

All at the British Museum.