Paging through a book during a preservation edit, you never quite know what you’ll find. A fun find this week: flower petals!

Pressed in the pages of a 1774 edition of The Pantheon, Representing the Fabulous Histories of the Heathen Gods … for the Use of Schools by Andrew Tooke, Laura (Project Archivist) discovered flower petals pressed into the pages. How long these petals have been pressed in the pages is hard to determine! Researching more about its history coming to Salisbury House–and if flower petals were laid in then–may tell us more. Did this flower come from the Salisbury House Garden?