Enfilade

Now on view at the Garden Museum:

Seeds of Exchange: Canton and London in the 1700s

Garden Museum, 11 February — 10 May 2026

Mak Sau (Mauk-Sow-U) 麥秀, Citrus Maxima, 1771 (Upperville, VA: Oak Spring Garden Foundation).

Discover the relationship between John Bradby Blake (1745–1773), an English botanist who worked as a supercargo for the East India Company in the 1770s, his Chinese interlocutor Whang At Tong 黃遏東, and Mak Sau 麥秀, the botanical artist Bradby Blake commissioned to document plants native to Canton.

The exhibition explores the exchange of botanical knowledge shared between Canton (now Guangzhou) and London between 1766 and 1773, displaying a collection of Chinese botanical art and research for the first time in Britain since it was commissioned 235 years ago. Featuring 30 botanical paintings by the artist Mak Sau together with herbals, maps, models, a portrait of Whang At Tong by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), and watercolours and drawings of Canton from the V&A, Seeds of Exchange tells the story of a little-known international botanical collaboration.

Bradby Blake worked in Canton in the late 1760s until his death in 1773, during which time he commissioned more than 150 botanical paintings of Chinese plants, the makings of an unfinished ‘Compleat Chinensis’. In his garden in Canton, he grew local plants such as Camellia japonica, Kumquat (Citrus japonica), and tangerines from seeds and cuttings, documenting and recording information about seed germination and growing conditions and sending seeds and plants to England. The exhibition brings together Bradby Blake’s archive of Chinese herbals and research material, reuniting the botanical paintings they inspired for the first time in 235 years.

The exhibition is produced in collaboration with the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Virginia, where Bradby Blake’s archive is now held.