A Curious Herbal was remarkable because it was essentiallly a one-person operation: Elizabeth Blackwell (1700-1758) drew the 500 illustrations, engraved the copper plates and then finally hand colored them herself!
Due to the need for an updated herbal (or pharmacopia in modern terminology, a book containing directions for the identification of compound medicines) at that time, A Curious Herbal was successful through a first edition and then twenty years later, a second edition (The Herbarium Blackwelliianum, revised and enlarged by the great botanist, Jacob Trew). The German or second edition, from which these plates are taken, is generally recognized as artistically superior to the orginal edtion.
