Sixteenth Century Quote of the Week

Rodolph

"There were all manner of shapes, men and women, half men and half horse, sirens, serving-maids with baskets, French lilies and delicate crenellations all round made from dry twigs bound together and the afore-said evergreen quick set shrubs, or entirely of rosemary, all true to the life, and so cleverly and amusingly interwoven, mingled and grown together, trimmed and arranged picture-wise that their equal would be hard to find."

Thomas Platter (1574-1628), Swiss physician, traveller and diarist

Describing topiaries in garden at Hampton Court, 1599

[translated by Clare Williams, 1937]