Snowdrops have inspired all manner of designs on linocuts, watercolours, oil paintings, product packaging, needlepoint, cross stitch, knitting - and stained glass. This is a detail of a 2019 window in St John the Evangelist in Langcliffe, Yorks, by Ann Sotheran. 

The Snowdrop (1804) is a mezzotint engraving from The Temple of Flora (1799-1807), "one of the greatest ever flower books". It was compiled by Dr Robert John Thornton (1768-1837), a physician and botanical writer who lectured on medical botany, and featured plates by a number of artists reproduced using a variety of techniques. Mezzotint is type of intaglio printing which gives soft gradations of tone; here it allows the snowdrops and crocuses to stand out against the winter landscape. 

This elegant snowdrop tile design (c1880) is by Christopher Dresser (1834-1904) and was made by Minton Hollins & Co. Below the snowdrops is a row of small, stylised bulbs and the row above shows a worm's eye view of the flowers. Christopher Dresser is considered to be Britain’s first independent industrial designer but began his career as a botanist, and flowers and plants feature in many of his designs.

Snowdrops (c1935, National Galleries of Scotland) is by Mabel Royds (1874-1941) whose technique was indebted to Japanese woodcuts.She studied at the Slade School of Art then the Edinburgh School of Art where trained with Frank Morley Fletcher who was one of the first to bring the traditional art of Japanese woodcut printing to Britain. Her various flower woodcut prints are beautiful, and many feature on greetings cards. 

We have a very unassuming but well-loved subject on the Post this week: snowdrops. They are emerging now and herald the promise, if not the actual arrival, of spring. They have also inspired many artists in various media. This is a collage made in 1777 by Mary Delany, now in an album in the British Museum. She began her "exquisite craft" at the age of 72 and went on to produce "a series of 985 extraordinarily detailed floral collages".

Margaret Watkins moved to Glasgow - the city her parents had left to emigrate to Canada - in 1928. She never returned to North America, and more or less vanished. Not long before her death she gave her archive, wrapped in brown paper, to a neighbour who was interested in black and white photography and he had to promise not to open it until after she had died. The story of how, in the early 1970s, he discovered "one of the finest collections of artistic work achieved by the camera in the interwar era" is told here, Her last series of photographs was of Glasgow's building sites, and the Finnieston Crane (above, early 1930s) in particular.

Margaret Watkins rose to prominence in the 1920s and she was in great demand in NYC; this is her commissioned study, now in The Met, for a 1924 advertisement for Woodbury's Soap. It was her ability to portray domestic subjects in seductive ways that enabled her to become a successful commercial photographer, and she was one of the first to develop a photographic language for advertising. Art Canada Institute has an excellent account for those interested in knowing more about Margaret Atkins' life and work.