December 12th is National Poinsettia Day! It’s a day to celebrate one of the most recognizable flowers associated with the Christmas holiday season. Its association with Christmas originated in the 1500s in Mexico but it wasn’t until the 1920s when Paul Ecke, a farmer in California, developed a grafting technique that caused the seedlings to branch and create more flowers. For today, Howard letterpress printed an image of a floral arrangement of some poinsettias from a photo engraving. Like some of our other holiday photo engravings, these would have been common stock images found in most printing offices that produced holiday cards. This was printed with Pantone Red Pepper oil base ink using our Washington hand press. • • • #NationalPoinsettiaDay #flowers #flower #poinsettia #art #christmas #powerofthepress #SacHistoryMuseum #sacramento #museum #history #letterpress #printingpress #asmr #printing #oldsacramento #letterpressprinting #printmaking