Natural Interactions in the Book as Art and Making Knowledge
Pasting
Engagement with the natural history book expanded to more physical practices. Pasting was an endeavor that created a direct physical interaction with nature’s creations. Users cut out prints and drawings of specimens and pasted them into their copies of natural history treatises, personal scrapbooks, and other print albums. Naturalists collected, pressed, and pasted plants in herbaria (bound book collections of dried specimens). Whether real-life or illustrated, pasted specimens had a life before they were pasted in their new contexts. Upon their insertion into books, pasted materials, akin to items in collections, have become parts of a bigger whole. Collections of pasted prints and dried specimens usually followed organizing principles similar to those of natural history treatises: the pasted specimens were arranged according to their physical properties, behavioral qualities, and natural habitats. The act of cropping, pasting, gathering, and pressing paper and physical specimens created a channel through which nature could be examined and crafted first-hand in the book. Books with pasted materials in them became sites that one could revisit to experience the materiality of natural forms with the tip of the finger.
Carolus Clusius (1526-1609)
Exoticorvm libri decem: quibus animalium, plantarum, aromatum, aliorumq́ue peregrinorum fructuum historiae describuntur. Item Petri Belloni Observationes, eodem Carolo Clvsio interprete. Series totius operis post praefationem indicabitur. [Antverpiae] ex officina Plantiniana Raphelengii, 1605.
Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University
Dried specimen of Japanese knotweed in Clusius’ natural history
Close-up view of dried specimen of Japanese knotweed in Clusius’ natural history
What better place to hide a dried specimen than in a natural history treatise? The unknown individual who tucked a pressed leaf on a little twig with flowers in between the pages of a copy of Carolus Clusius’ Exoticorum libri decem (“Ten Books of Exotic Life Forms”) surely agrees with the sentiment. The book provides the reader with information about the kinds of distant botanical and zoological specimens that most interested collectors and would often end up on their shelves, both as real-life specimens and as illustrations. The inserted plant is Japanese knotweed, a specimen originally native to East Asia, a fitting addition to the book’s theme. It is unclear when the plant was placed in the book. Dried specimens can be preserved for centuries, so it is possible that a reader active in the 1600s eager to satisfy his or her desire to collect nonnative plants preserved the specimen. The knotweed, however, had become established and proliferated both in Europe and North America in the subsequent centuries, and thus, could have been pressed at a much later time in either place. The specimen does not correspond to any of the illustrations in the book, and it is not glued to the page like plants in herbaria. Anyone could have easily gathered and pressed the plant in the book. But similar to herbaria entries, the real-life specimen creates a more direct, tangible, and personal connection to nature than the illustrations do. Whether a plant from the shores of Asia or a local invasive specimen, the dried knotweed commemorated a moment in time and nature. Ripped from the larger realm of natural creation and recontextualized in Clusius’s book, it embodies the touch of its preserver and evokes the moment of its collection and pressing. The pages conserved not only the plant but also the individual story of its preserver for perpetuity.
Jean Seris (French, 1700s)
Herbarium with dried specimens, 1761
Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University
Clary sage in Seris’ herbarium
Pressed specimens gained new importance in herbaria collections. A collection of dried plants, and sometimes insects, herbaria provide several layers of knowledge about nature’s most delicate creations. Jean Seris’s bound collection of dried plants and flowers is a remarkable example of that. The Frenchman was a student of surgery in Paris with extensive knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants. Seris’s expertise in healing is well reflected by his inclusion of a clary sage plant (p. 47). The naturalist glued a piece of paper on top of the plant’s stem for extra support. In this paper, the naturalist notes that the “fresh leaves of the plant are used to treat the inflamed eye.” A native to the Mediterranean basin, the sage might have been procured by Seris during one of his travels or through his extensive network of naturalists. Both traveling and networking were common activities among practicing naturalists.
Applemint, bellflower, and common snapdragon in Seris' herbarium
Seris also collected local plants with more ordinary uses, which he could more easily gather in the nearby fields of Paris or the gardens of his colleagues. Seris lists information on the use of such plants, their locale, and the kind of sensory experience they provide (pp. 20-21). He pressed an edible bellflower, which he describes as “very refreshing on salads.” The plant of the common snapdragon flower “adorns the gardens,” and all leaves of the apple mint are “aromatic.” It is almost as though Seris created a small kitchen garden–something his rooms in Paris would not allow–on paper, which he could easily cultivate by hand the same way as a gardener would care for a physical garden. He named all his specimens in Latin, which was the main language of natural history, but he described all of them in his native language French, which indicates the herbarium was for his personal use. Indeed, it is likely that Seris returned to his portable garden time and time again for continuous admiration and examination.
Unknown creator (English, 1700s)
Album of pressed botanical specimens from Norfolk, England : manuscript. 1793.
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Herbaria can also preserve the local flora of an entire region and show that the remedies to our most common ailments are often right next door. Compiled by an unknown individual, the album of pressed botanical specimens from Norfolk commemorates and celebrates the natural diversity and beauty of Eastern England. The preserver of the plants adhered the dried plants to the page with the support of pieces of paper, and hand-wrote their names on the page next to them. The pages are vertically ruled, which helped the preserver to create a symmetrical composition. The placement of the common cinquefoil displays a symmetrical composition of this kind (p. 4). The cinquefoil plant is also one of the two specimens for which the preserver included medicinal information. He or she notes that “the red cortical part of the root is mildly astringent and antiseptic. A decoction of it is a good gargle for loose teeth and pongy [unpleasantly smelling] gums.” The pressed cinquefoil and its description could serve as a medicinal guide, which helped quick and easy identification and provided a memory storehouse of the plant’s uses. The herbarium was likely produced by a local apothecary, naturalist, or a knowledgeable amateur with enough knowledge of plants and their Latin names, to whom the locals could turn in good faith should they have teeth or other common health problems.
Click on the arrows below to discover other specimens from the botanical album, along with the handwritten identification for each plant.
Carousel with 12 wide screen images of scans from books. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
