Color printing during the early 19th century was slow and labor-intensive. After printing an image in black and white, studio technicians applied color by hand using watercolor, a painstaking and time-consuming step. But following the introduction of chromolithography in the 1830s, hand coloring gradually fell out of favor. Chromolithography involves printing colors one by one using multiple printing stones. The process is logistically complex, but it saves time and labor relative to hand coloring, and it allowed 19th-century printers to achieve more saturated colors.

Complete Bloom is one of the earliest chromolithographs printed in the United States. Created in Boston by Sharp, an early pioneer of the technique, it portrays Victoria regia, a water lily native to South America that became a horticultural sensation following its introduction to the Northeast in 1851. Sharp included this print in a portfolio of six images showing the progression of the flower from bud to bloom.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023).