Conversion

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Serpent Dans L'Herbe

All via here and BioDivLibrary

Mandibles - A Natural History Collection

The mandible is the lower jaw of a vertebrate animal. This is perfectly apt since my mandible dropped from sheer wonderment the minute I crossed the threshold of this jam-packed creature emporium, and didn't quite recover until I was several blocks away. I really wanted to shout MANDIBLES from every Cape rooftop. Mandibles can be found up a rickety staircase in the Woodstock Foundry in Cape Town. Julia Jaki is the curator, Philipp Schulz, the taxidermist. Together, the Garden of Earthly Delights abounds. Our very own Deyrolle in Africa. In this jewel of a shop, those of a covetous nature like myself, really can be the proud owner of a simple egg of extreme fragility, the beak of a Bare-Eyed Cockatoo or (in my case) the skull of a baby Nile Crocodile...

Worth noting is the fact that all the birds, monkeys and small mammals come from zoos and bird parks - having died of natural causes - while the skulls, horns and skull-mounts of the larger Ungulata are by-products of South Africa's sustainable game farming industry.

All photographs by Philippa Berrington-Blew.

Spartan

The inner sanctum belonging to the Aesthetic Movement founder and creative director Jesse James...

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Eye for an Eye

Been away for the weekend at a swim gala in ostrich-country... Oudtshoorn. Forty degree plus temperatures (celsius). In the meantime (and rather randomly) until we settle back home and I rehydrate my innards, here is an antique illustration of the eye from 1899...

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Cajal's Butterflies of the Soul

Just three of the many intricate drawings from the book Cajal’s Butterflies of the Soul by author, Javier DeFelipe - a research professor at the Cajal Institute in Madrid. Ninety one additional Scientists are also featured in the book, but Cajal (the Nobel Prize-winning 'father of modern neuroscience') is singled out in the title. His illustrations have Twombly-esque qualities - amazing since they were executed in the late 1800's...

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Scientific Illustration

Long before X-rays were X-rays and daguerreotypes were de rigueur, academia had drawings. Simple, line-dominated dissections of fauna and flora; art meant more for learning than decoration. I could pore over every minute detail for hours...

Death’s Head Sphinx Moth

From: ‘A Monograph of Oriental Cicadidæ’ By W.L. Distant

Drawing of a retinal neuron by Ramón y Cajal

Sequoia sempervirens
From ‘Hooker’s Icones Plantarum’ vol. 4: t. 379 (1841)

From Text Book of Mycology and Plant Pathology,  John W. Harshberger

olio-ataxia: Phytological History 1673 Nehemiah Grew

Pelagia Cyanella, William Keith Brooks, 1910

Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life. Catherine C. Hopley, 1882.

‘Anatomia del corpo humano’ - Rome, 1559
Juan Valverde d'Amusco

Snake Skeleton, A. Duméril, 1834

Metacrinus Cingulatus
From the 'Report of the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger (1873-76)

Skeleton in Giovard Bidloo’s Ontleding des menschelyken lichaams
 (Gerard de Lairesse)

All images found via Scientific Illustration