Display Collection Of Eighteen Victorian Fern Specimens

Eighteen pressed and framed specimens of ferns originally collected and bound into an album by the Rev. Nathaniel Shafto Barthropp, now framed in fine replicas of a Victorian moulding so as to fill a feature wall to wonderful effect.

Eighteen pressed and framed specimens of ferns originally collected and bound into an album by the Rev. Nathaniel Shafto Barthropp, now framed in fine replicas of a Victorian moulding so as to fill a feature wall to wonderful effect.

Most of the specimens are inscribed in pen with their botanical name. each 15 in x 18.75 in

The Reverend Nathaniel Shafto Barthropp of Jesus College Oxford was Rector of Itton (Monmouthshire) by 1879. He was born at the very end of 1843 in Cretingham, Suffolk, the son of Nathaniel George, and enrolled at Jesus College Oxford in 1862 where he became a B.A. in 1867 and M.A. 1870.

Pteridomania, the collecting of ferns, lasted almost exactly the duration of Queen Victoria’s reign; the name given to the craze of collecting ferns by the author Charles Kingsley. By the middle of Queen Victoria’s reign the fern or its motif was being used as decoration on almost anything inanimate, from furniture to pottery, tombstones to fans. Originally an interest of the academic classes, such as our Rev. Nathaniel Shafto Barthropp, who pressed and bound our collection in around 1865, at its height the craze bought together enthusiasts from all different social classes, “even the farm labourer or miner could have a collection of British ferns which he had collected in the wild and a common interest sometimes brought people of very different social backgrounds together". And if you couldn’t afford a fernery then an album of pressed specimens was the answer. Towards the end of this Victorian craze, fern varieties such as the Killarney fern were almost extinct, however, new ones were also created, as plants from all over the world were jammed together in their Wardian cases resulting in many interesting new varieties.