Botanical by Snow Leopard Designs for Free Spirit Fabrics. The Botanical Collection is inspired by the many beautiful antique botanical illustrations in the Snow Leopard archive. During the 19th century Victorian explorers and plant hunters searched the far corners of the known world for new and exotic flowering plants and shrubs. These were then brought back to England and propagated in the great botanical gardens such as Kew in Surrey. These new plants were soon being painted by the best artists of the day and started to appear in great abundance in the floral fabrics and wallpapers from the mid 19th century onwards. The designs in this collection have been carefully developed from a select group of hand-colored lithographic plates in a number of old leather bound volumes from the archive and painted in both traditional and contemporary.
