Joseph Dandridge (January 1665 Winslow, Buckinghamshire – 23 December 1747 London[1]), was an English silk-pattern designer of Huguenot descent,[2] a natural history illustrator, an amateur naturalist specialising in entomology, and a leading figure in the Society of Aurelians of which he was a founder member.
[3] Despite having left no published works, and not being part of the close-knit collectors of the Royal Society, Dandridge is credited by numerous entomologists of his time with having provided invaluable assistance and access to his extensive collections of specimens, and even near the end of his life remaining 'affable and communicative'.
[4] The collections spanned, besides insects and arachnids, shells, fossils, birds' eggs and skins, flowering plants, lichens, mosses and fungi.
[6] A number of Dandridge's silk designs dating from 1717 to 1722 have found their way to the Victoria & Albert Museum and may be seen in the Prints & Drawings Study Room.
He became acquainted with the leading workers in the fields of his interests, such as John Ray, Adam Buddle, Benjamin Wilkes, Eleanor Glanville[8] and William Sherard, and instructed Eleazar Albin,[9] the watercolourist, in natural history.