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Limited edition letterpress print
Croton has a wonderfully contradictory history.
It is flamboyant and decorative, its extraordinary foliage making it immediately at home in a garden. Yet behind that beauty lies a much stranger story.
While researching Walter Hill, Brisbane’s first colonial botanist, I discovered that Croton had been used medicinally throughout history, including Croton oil as an extremely powerful purgative. Other species found their way into an altogether different kind of concoction, their bark used to flavour drinks including Campari and Vermouth.
And then there was Brisbane.
Hill propagated and distributed Crotons during his early curatorship of the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, helping the plants find their way into gardens across the city.
I loved all of these contradictions: decorative and medicinal, beautiful and potent, familiar and slightly strange.
In drawing the plant, its bold leaves and delicate flower forms began to take on a strong graphic quality. Repeated and reorganised, they moved further away from botanical illustration and into pattern.
I printed Croton on an original Heidelberg Windmill letterpress, giving those digitally drawn forms a physical impression in paper.
Perhaps that is what continues to intrigue me about this work.
There is much more hiding inside a beautiful plant than first meets the eye.
The Edition
Released in an edition of just ten, Croton is letterpress printed on Magnani Incisioni 650/5 Smooth White 100% cotton rag paper using rubber-based inks.
Each print is signed, titled and individually numbered on the front, wrapped in acid-free tissue and presented in a custom protective envelope. It is accompanied by information detailing the artwork, the Collected Patterns series and its place within the edition.
The print is sold unframed and ships worldwide in a rigid protective envelope.
Edition: 10
Paper size: 300 × 260 mm
Paper: Magnani Incisioni 650/5 Smooth White, 100% cotton rag
Printing: Letterpress with rubber-based inks
Press: Heidelberg Windmill
Signed: Signed, titled and numbered on front
Framing: Unframed
Shipping: Worldwide
Limited edition letterpress print
Croton has a wonderfully contradictory history.
It is flamboyant and decorative, its extraordinary foliage making it immediately at home in a garden. Yet behind that beauty lies a much stranger story.
While researching Walter Hill, Brisbane’s first colonial botanist, I discovered that Croton had been used medicinally throughout history, including Croton oil as an extremely powerful purgative. Other species found their way into an altogether different kind of concoction, their bark used to flavour drinks including Campari and Vermouth.
And then there was Brisbane.
Hill propagated and distributed Crotons during his early curatorship of the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, helping the plants find their way into gardens across the city.
I loved all of these contradictions: decorative and medicinal, beautiful and potent, familiar and slightly strange.
In drawing the plant, its bold leaves and delicate flower forms began to take on a strong graphic quality. Repeated and reorganised, they moved further away from botanical illustration and into pattern.
I printed Croton on an original Heidelberg Windmill letterpress, giving those digitally drawn forms a physical impression in paper.
Perhaps that is what continues to intrigue me about this work.
There is much more hiding inside a beautiful plant than first meets the eye.
The Edition
Released in an edition of just ten, Croton is letterpress printed on Magnani Incisioni 650/5 Smooth White 100% cotton rag paper using rubber-based inks.
Each print is signed, titled and individually numbered on the front, wrapped in acid-free tissue and presented in a custom protective envelope. It is accompanied by information detailing the artwork, the Collected Patterns series and its place within the edition.
The print is sold unframed and ships worldwide in a rigid protective envelope.
Edition: 10
Paper size: 300 × 260 mm
Paper: Magnani Incisioni 650/5 Smooth White, 100% cotton rag
Printing: Letterpress with rubber-based inks
Press: Heidelberg Windmill
Signed: Signed, titled and numbered on front
Framing: Unframed
Shipping: Worldwide