A Queen’s Book of Flowers Exhibition

What did a 17th-century queen know about daffodils in Africa? How did books (and gardens) shape the world for women who couldn’t travel? What flowers did they grow? How were flowers part of empire? 

Visit a letterpress display at Thin Ice Press: the York Centre for Print reimagining women’s knowledge about plants and join in a botanical printing activity. Discover a book of flowers written for a queen and explore questions about women’s floral worlds.

Please note: Thin Ice Press: the York Centre for Print is open Fridays to Mondays, 10am to 5pm and Thursdays 1pm to 8pm.

You may also enjoy an accompanying workshop 'A Queen’s Book of Flowers' on Saturday 7 June. 

About the speaker

Dr Susannah Lyon-Whaley is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (UKRI-guaranteed) Fellow at the University of York in the Department of English and Related Literature. She completed a PhD in Art History at Waipapa Taumata Rau The University of Auckland in New Zealand in 2023. She has written on queens, flowers and spas at the Tudor and Stuart courts. Her current project focuses on 17th-century queens and their interactions with the foreign world of nature through materials and books.