Specimens

Not well lit, detail lost, could be better composed etc ... but intriguing, non? ... the story behind the image even moreso, perhaps.

I was browsing through my odds & ends on this wet indoorsy afternoon when I rediscovered these dried botanical specimens, part of a collection of approximately fifty (seaweed mainly) which are normally kept between the covers of a very old book designed specifically to preserve them. The book also contains three pencil drawings, one being a depiction of two men in stovepipe hats fishing from a village bridge, initialled and dated 1832. Going by the subjects of this and the other drawings I'm pretty sure they're English scenes. Whether or not the date is genuine I don't know. If it is, and the specimens were collected around that time, it is possible some of those plants may by now be extinct.

I found the book in a junk shop twenty years ago and so have no idea of its provenance, except that it seems likely to be British.

I'll post the 1832 drawing on tomorrow's blip. See what you think.

Anyhows, I intend exploring ways of better presenting these curious relics with studio lighting, and more patience.