Natural Interactions in the Book as Art and Making Knowledge

Folding

The inclusion of fold-out pages in books added an extra step and usually an extra cost to the publishing of one’s book. If fold-outs were so time-consuming and pricey, why did the authors want to add any? Authors might have incorporated fold-out pages to increase the visual and the interactive appeal of their publications. Fold-out pages required no artistic talent or any prior knowledge of natural history. Anyone could enjoy the elevated reading experience they offered. At the same time, fold-outs called for special care from readers who opened up the fragile pages hidden in books and they required the same level of patience and dexterity that the production of the book demanded. One can only surmise that the careful revealing increased the anticipation of early modern readers even further, whose fingers slowly uncovered concealed images of flora and fauna, the internal anatomy of insects, and maps of distant places. The physical process of unfolding the illustrations engages readers in an act of discovery akin to finding, touching, and examining real-life specimens and vistas in nature. Paper becomes the readers’ physical fieldwork that touch brings to life.

Microscopic image of the flea in Hooke’s Micrographia

Proper hand-eye coordination is essential to studying nature by hand. This is nowhere more apparent than in microscopy. Developed in the early 1600s, the microscope had only become widely used among naturalists in the second half of the seventeenth century. The discovery of uncharted microscopic worlds inspired artistic inventiveness: how to render invisible particles visible on paper? The answer was usually the bigger the better. English naturalist Robert Hooke (1635-1703), among other practitioners, produced enlarged illustrations, frequently displayed on large fold-out pages, to provide their readers with the most striking experience of the specimens. His book, the Micrographia (1665), is filled with microscopic observations and illustrations of this kind. Illustrations were so vital to Hooke's scholarship that he issued an edition that contained only the copper plates. Readers find an exquisite enlarged image of the flea in one opening. Allusions to the hand are all over the image. Considered a perfect and beautiful design by God, the equally remarkable image of the insect is the result of the engraver’s arduous manual labor. Trained as an engraver and artist, Hooke designed the drawings of his specimens himself. The readers also partake in a tactile experience as they carefully have to unfold the several layers that conceal the specimen. Not unlike the microscopist, readers coordinate their hands and eyes as they gradually discover the appearance of the insect, part by part.

Image of the toadfish in Charleton’s natural history

Walter Charleton (English, 1619-1707)
[Onomasticon zoicon], continens plerumque animalium quadrupedu, serpentium, insectorum, avium, & piscium differentias ... Cui accedunt mantissa anatomica, et nonnulla de variis fossilium generibus. Londini, apud Jacobum Allestry, 1671.
Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University
 
 
Specimens that were harder to access in real life also came under the scrutinizing hands of the reader in the natural history book. English naturalist Walter Charleton (1619-1707) produced the Onomasticon zoicon (1671), a large-scale work on birds, fishes, quadrupeds, reptiles, and insects with several fold-out pages. After an elaborate opening, readers find a close to real-life size image of the toadfish (p. 201). The toadfish is represented from above as though floating on top of the water, with its eyeballs positioned upward and facing the viewer glaringly. The level of depth provided by alternating shadows encourages readers not only to look but also to explore the entire body of the fish with their fingers, including the creature’s gaping mouth and the small pelvic fins that are lettered. A cleverly mended tear of the page on the left side points both to the tactility and fragility of the page as it served the curiosity of armchair naturalists.

Image of an alchata (pin-tailed sandgrouse) in Charleton’s natural history

Image of a loxia (crossbill) in Charleton’s natural history

Image of a merops (bee-eater) in Charleton’s natural history

Image of a ficedula (flycatcher) in Charleton’s natural history

Image of a hawfinch in Charleton’s natural history

Image of a hoopoe in Charleton’s natural history