25 Vintage Botanical Illustrations: Free Printable Art

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Update: We are truly flattered that Country Sampler magazine published one of our photos from this post in their 2018 Spring Decorating edition!

As promised from our last home tour, I’m sharing 25 free printable vintage botanical illustrations that I used to add color and character over the fireplace mantle.

There’s just something about the casual elegance of vintage botanical prints that I’ve been drawn to since I was in my early twenties.

As soon as I graduated college, I moved out of my parent’s house and rented a small duplex in the historic district near one of the colleges.

Not having much money, I shopped thrift stores and consignment shops to decorate my new place. One of the first things I bought was a set of framed vintage botanical prints I found at the Goodwill for $20. The prints were yellowed from time and the frames were antique gold (which wasn’t in style at the time) but I felt like I hit the jackpot. To this day, I haven’t been able to let them go and still have them hanging in my hallway upstairs.

Since then, it’s much easier to find botanical illustrations on the internet. There are hundreds of free public domain websites that allow you to download prints, but I found that the New York Public Library was the easiest to navigate and find the prints I was looking for.

All the prints I’m sharing with you today are by the renowned painter and botanist, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, from his book Les Liliacées. Redouté was the official court artist of Queen Marie Antoinette. Lucky lady!

Instead of you having to scroll through all 495 images from the book, I selected 25 images for you to download as a PDF.

Click here to download or print the free vintage botanical illustrations.

Once you get to the PDF, you can either download all the images or print directly from your computer.

Then, you can choose which page you’d like to print. Since my laser printer only prints in black, I had the images printed on medium weight matte paper at my local Kinkos.

If you want to print on paper that has the antique look as if it’s been yellowed and aged over time, you can print the images on this type of paper.

move the cursor to the top of the page and chose the icons to either download or print the botanical art

To browse all the images on the NYPL website from Redouté’s Les Liliacées, click this link. Then, you can select and download the image quality you prefer.

how to select and print free public domain botanicals.

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I was inspired by this picture to layer and tape the photos casually on the space above my mantle.

via moonandtrees.tumblr.com

To give the prints a more vintage look, as if the paper had become brittle over time, I trimmed the edges using Fiskars deckle edge scissors from Amazon.

Then, I staggered the height, overlapped the edges, and hung the pictures using masking tape.

Later, I can hang the art the same way I hung the vintage-inspired lithographs in my oldest son’s bedroom or I can frame them and add to the collection in my upstairs hallway.

Now it’s your turn! Tell me in the comments what you would use these vintage botanical illustrations for.

This fireplace used to look totally different before we gave it a makeover by reframing it, adding stone tile, and shiplap. Check out all the details and before and after pictures in this link.