Audubon, Butterflies, and Flowers Note Cube with Drawer Set

Description

Add a touch of art to your desk with our handy Audubon, Butterflies, and Flowers Note Cube Set. Artist, birdwatcher, and conservationist John James Audubon (American, 1785–1851) captured North American birds’ spirited energy in their native habitats. Our note cube is inspired by Audubon's hand-colored Indigo Bunting lithograph within the Museum's collection. The butterflies reproduced on our second note cube are adapted from an early nineteenth-century coverlet made in China for the American market. Skillfully embroidered in polychrome silks, the crimson silk coverlet features a field of varied butterflies fluttering around a basket of flowers, deep borders of garden scenes, and fringe on all four sides. The Horticultural Society of London (now the Royal Horticultural Society) was founded in 1804 with the purpose of gathering information about plants and improving horticultural practice. Its articles were collected in Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London, which featured superb hand-colored engravings, including the flowers reproduced here.

Each cube contains 500 notepaper sheets and 50 colored paper clips. Note cube: 3 1/4''L x 3 1/4''W x 4 1/8''H; notepaper sheets: 3'' square.

Art History

John James Audubon (American, 1785–1851) spent years studying birds in the wild, then made 435 watercolors for The Birds of America, a lavish series of large aquatints published in Edinburgh and London between 1827 and 1838. After returning to New York, the artist worked with J. B. Chevalier of Philadelphia to create 500 hand-colored lithographs of his designs. These were published in seven octavo volumes between 1840 and 1844.