John Starkie Gardner

Born in 1844, John Starkie Gardner built a life that crossed several fields. Reliable collection records describe him as a botanist and paleontologist, and his published work on fossil plants included major studies of the British Eocene flora.

Later in life, he also became known as an artistic metalworker and a serious historian of his craft. Two Temple Place describes him as one of the foremost artistic metalworkers of his time, noting both his own commissions and his scholarly writing on early modern metalwork.

That combination of maker and researcher gives his work a distinctive character. Whether writing about ancient plant life or historic design, he seems to have approached subjects with the same careful, curious attention. He died in 1930.