About Us

Welcome to Antiquarian Print Shop!

I am Iris Windsor, the curator and founder.

My interest in all things old began in my childhood. Money was tight on the farm, but we were surrounded by many pieces of very old farm equipment. These pieces had me absolutely fascinated and my great grandfather who was blind and lived with my grandparents, had many stories to tell about the early days on his sugar cane farm.

My grandparents home was filled with lots of “things” that I found fascinating. My grandmother was also a great story teller. She was a teacher and a very beautiful dressmaker. I still look at her silver shoe pin cushion and remember her stories about her dressmaking days in the “big” houses. I have a wooden timber thimble box that has a picture of the school that she attended in England where she learnt her dressmaking skills and still holds its little silver thimble. Her little wooden stamp box with “London” engraved on the top was used to hold her stamps during her years of teaching, and still holds a special place in my home.

My father's shed on the farm was just filled with all sorts of memorabilia. I loved spending time looking at these things and dreaming of stories of times gone by. Even at that early age I had discovered that everything had a story. This has been a theme that has kept me interested for a very long time.

As the years have passed my interest has passed from one thing to the next, finally settling on antique prints, maps and very old books. My interest in prints began during the time in which I lived in Rockhampton as a direct result of renovating old period homes , called "Queenslanders”. When it came time to style what I had renovated, I looked specifically for old prints and discovered this whole new area of collecting which was initially botanical prints.

This led to an absolutely fascinating new area involving the most amazing stories that I couldn’t even imagine. The discovery of botanical prints led to the discovery of maps of the voyages of our earliest ocean explorers, the botanicals of Australia, the birds, the animals.  The work of people that we learnt about in primary school like John White, Surgeon General on the first fleet with Captain Arthur Phillips, Sir Joseph Banks...the list goes on and so does the fascination with antique prints as every collection of prints tells a story.

I was fascinated by the story of how these prints originated...how they came into being. How and why they were recorded and how the people in the community were able to access them. The collection that we offer through Antiquarian Print Gallery has been carefully selected. They are of the highest quality, authenticated through hundreds of hours of research. They would make a great addition to any collector's catalogues or a beautiful work of art displayed on the walls of your home.

We offer a personaI and friendly service. I hope that you enjoy searching through our site and if you are not able to find what you are looking for or if you have any questions please reach out.

Our online collection is only a small sample of what we have in our collection.

We add prints regularly so keep checking back or stay up to date by joining our community at the website pop up. 

Happy browsing!!

Iris.