“FAC-SIMILES OF NATURE”: VICTORIAN WAX FLOWER MODELLING

Abstract

THE GIGANTIC WATER LILY WHOSEseeds were brought to England from the Amazon in 1847 had been sighted a decade earlier in British Guiana by Sir Robert Schomburgk and described in 1837. NamedVictoria regiaand now known asVictoria amazonica, the spectacular specimen had huge leaves five feet in diameter and seventeen feet in circumference, and flowers more than twelve inches in diameter. Germination of the seeds took some time, but in 1849 three plants developed, and the race was on to propagate the first flower. The triumphal first bud in England opened in early November 1849, its flower measuring three feet in circumference, at the Chatsworth estate of the Duke of Devonshire where the gardener and landscape architect, Joseph Paxton, had designed a greenhouse and water tanks for this purpose; Margaret Darby has detailed the precise attention that Paxton gave to the levels of light, moisture, and heat so as to approximate the plant's native habitat. TheVictoria regiaproduced 126 large, beautiful, and fragrant white and pink tinted flowers. It was a popular wonder and received clamorous public attention for its size, beauty, and surprising strength. Paxton presented a leaf and flower to the Queen and Prince Albert at Windsor, and a well-known engraving in theIllustrated London News, November 17, 1849, showed Paxton's eight-year old daughter Annie standing on one of the leaves. Publication in 1851 ofVictoria Regia; or Illustrations of the Royal Water-Lilywith life-sized drawings and lithographs by Walter Hood Fitch and descriptions by the botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker brought further celebrity to the plant. Soon after, John and Horatio Mintorn, wax flower artists in London, were commissioned to make a model of the flower of this huge plant in different stages of development – “from the large and bristly bud to the white opening petals, and the full-blown flower, in its beautiful variegation of form and tint” (theDaily NewsJuly 17, 1850). Exhibition of the wax model generated wide press coverage about the “fac-simile…of one of the most curious botanical phenomenon of the present age” (Mintorn 1844, ii-iii).