Set of Four Cork-Backed Coasters after William Hooker, The Royal Horticultural Society Collection, English, c. 1970–2000

The Piece

Four round coasters, each carrying a different fruit study reproduced from a botanical painting.

The subjects are an apple, three plums on the branch, a cluster of apricots, and a spray of black cherries, each drawn with the leaves and the cut stem still attached, on a warm cream ground.

The borders are what lift them. Working inward from the edge: a broad emerald green band, a fine gold line, a second green band, another gold line, and then a wreath of foliage printed in mottled greens and blues with the texture of marbled endpaper. The whole thing is finished under a high gloss.

Printed within each image, in small letters, are the artist's signature W. Hooker and the line THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY COLLECTION curving around the lower edge.

The backs are faced in natural cork. Three of the four still carry a small circular gold-and-red foil maker's label at the centre.

History & Provenance

The signature on these is real and worth knowing, because most people read it as decoration.

William Hooker (1779–1832) was the official artist of the Royal Horticultural Society from 1812 until he retired in 1820. He trained under Franz Bauer, one of the finest botanical draughtsmen in Europe, and he became known above all for painting fruit — work collected in Pomona Londinensis, his record of the most esteemed fruits then grown in British gardens. These four images come out of that body of work, which the RHS still holds and still licenses.

He is also the reason for something on a great many painters' palettes today. Hooker invented Hooker's green, mixing Prussian blue with gamboge to get a dark, true leaf colour that nothing then available could give him. He made it to paint foliage accurately. Two centuries later it is still manufactured under his name — which is a rare kind of immortality for a man most people have never heard of, and it is very likely the green in the leaves on these coasters.

The coasters themselves are later reproductions, not antique objects, and that is stated plainly. They are printed board faced with cork in the English manner — the standard construction for licensed table mats and coasters produced in Britain through the later twentieth century, where the RHS collection was a mainstay of the giftware trade.

The maker's foil label is present on three of the four but has worn illegible, and no printed manufacturer's name appears anywhere on the faces or the cork. The set is offered unattributed as to manufacturer, with the artist and the source collection both named on the pieces themselves.

Dated on the construction and the licensing rather than the images, which are two hundred years old: c. 1970–2000.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Coasters are bought reluctantly and used constantly, which makes them worth getting right. These are green and gold and cream, which is about as easy a palette as exists — they sit on walnut, oak, painted furniture, marble, leather or linen without looking like they were chosen to match anything.

Four different fruits rather than one repeated image is the detail that matters at a table. Everyone can tell which glass is theirs, which is the entire practical point of a coaster set and something a matched set fails at.

They also work as small pictures. Propped on a shelf, stood in a plate rack, or simply left out on a side table, a Hooker fruit study reads as a botanical print at a fraction of the price and the wall space — and there is a genuine two-hundred-year-old painting behind each one.

For a gift they are easy and specific: a gardener, a fruit grower, a cook, a housewarming, or anyone who has been to Wisley. And the story about Hooker's green is the kind a person repeats.

A note on care, and it is the same rule that kills most coasters. Do not soak these and never put them in a dishwasher. They are printed board under a lacquer with a cork facing glued on, and water that gets past the edge will swell the board, lift the cork and cloud the print — permanently. The printed rims on this set are already worn through in places, which means the board is exposed there and will drink up anything it is left sitting in.

Wipe them with a barely damp cloth and dry immediately. Use no abrasive pad, no scouring cream and no solvent-based cleaner, all of which cut straight through a printed lacquer surface.

Lift a wet glass off rather than dragging it, keep them out of direct sunlight, which fades printed colour faster than anything else, and stack them dry with a piece of paper or felt between each one so the cork does not mark the face beneath it.