to the dismay of her family. They were married in June 1743. The Delanys passed a year in London before moving to Dublin, where Dr Delany had a home. They also rented Mount Panther in County Down and during their first year in the house Patrick was made Dean of Down. Both husband and wife were very interested in botany and gardening: After twenty-five years of marriage, most of it spent in Ireland, Dr Delany died in Bath, England, on 6 May 1768 at the age of eighty-four, and Mrs Delany, now sixty-eight, found herself again a widow. Later life As a widow, Mary Delany spent even more of her time at Bulstrode, the home of her close friend, Margaret Bentinck, Dowager Duchess of Portland. The two shared an interest in botany, often going out to look for specific specimens. It was during her frequent stays at Bulstrode that Mary became acquainted with two well-known botanists of the time: Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander. This contact with the botanists encouraged Mary's interest in botany and also developed the knowledge on which many of her flower paper-cuttings are based. Mary Delany died on 15 April 1788. There is a memorial to her in St James's Church, Piccadilly. Career as an artist Mary Delany had always been an artist, but during her marriage to Dr Delany she had the time to hone her skills. She was also a gardener, and did needlework, drawing, and painting; but was best known for her paper-cutting: "For these 'mosaicks' are coloured paper representing not only conspicuous details but also contrasting colours or shades of the same colour so that every effect of light is caught". She struck up a friendship with Letitia Bushe, a watercolourist and miniaturist, with whom she embarked on a number of artistic projects. In 1771, a widow in her early 70s, Mary began on decoupage, a fashion with ladies of the court. Her works were detailed and botanically accurate depictions of plants, using tissue paper and hand colouration. She created 985 of these works, calling them her "Paper Mosaiks ", from the age of 71 to 88, when her eyesight failed her. "With the plant specimen set before her she cut minute particles of coloured paper to represent the petals, stamens, calyx, leaves, veins, stalk and other parts of the plant, and, using lighter and darker paper to form the shading, she