CIRCA 1735

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), the daughter and granddaughter of famed Frankfurt artists, engravers and printers, became an artist herself and an amateur botanist. She wrote in her journal "From my youth onwards I have been concerned with the study of insects, in which I began with silkworms in my native city...which led me to collect all the caterpillars I could find in order to study their metamorphosis". This pattern is a combination of details from three studies in her third Raupenbuch (caterpillar book), while its border relates closey to Pronk designs. See Antiques magazine, August 2000, for Charlotte Jacob-Hanson on Merian