To most people “Kip & Knyff” sounds like a bit like a Victorian music hall act, but say “Kip and Knyff” to a garden or architectural historian and they will instantly picture a bird’s eye view of a great English house and estate from the late 17th or early 18thc.
“Kip and Knyff” always seem to “go together like a horse and carriage” as the song would have it, but although they had much in common and are often spoken of in the same breath they were not in fact a regular business partnership or even usual working companions and seem to have had little to do with each other apart from their most famous collaboration, Britannia Illustrata Or Views of Several of the Queens Palaces, as Also of the Principal seats of the Nobility and Gentry of Great Britain, Curiously Engraven on 80 Copper Plates the first volume of which was published 1707.
The only obvious ‘joint’ biographical facts are their Dutch origins and the fact that they were also of a similar age and longevity, Knyff being born in 1650 and Kip 3 years later, and both were to die in London in 1721.
Knyff’s signature on a still life painting in a private collection from https://rkd.nl/en/explore/images/record?filters%5Bkunstenaar%5D=Knijff%2C+Leonard&query=&start=1
So, as a result I’m writing two separate posts about them – one each! And this week its the turn of Leonard Knyff…
![Hyacinthus orientalis L. [as Hyacinthus orientalis caeruleo] Passe, C. van de, Hortus floridus (coloured plates), fasicle 1. vernalis, t. 10, fig. 1 (1614)](https://thegardenhistory.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/246393.jpg?w=640&h=430)
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