The Paper Garden: An Artist (Begins Her Life's Work) at 72 by Molly Peacock
Mary Delaney was a minor member of the British aristocracy in the 18th century. After the death of a much older husband ended an unhappy marriage, she created for herself a new life, full of friends, music, art, science and remarriage. During her second widowhood, at the age 72, Mrs. Delaney began to construct flower mosaics from cut paper and continued to do so for the next 10 years, creating 985 beautiful and botanically correct pictures, now kept in the British Museum. Paper Garden contains color reproductions of some of her work.
