Captivity: Assembling Nature’s Histories
Conference organized by Anna Chen, Rebecca Fenning Marschall, and Bronwen Wilson, University of California, Los Angeles The early modern period was a hothouse for the study of physical things in the natural world, and for the collection and assembly of them in human-made physical spaces. In other periods, botanical samples were preserved by diarists in their journals, such as the Clark Library’s Pressed specimens of butterflies and moths (1905), compiled by Yasushi Nawa (1857–1926). Nawa’s lepidochromic book showcases the technique of “printing butterflies,” or fixing the scales of their wings onto paper. Specimens of all sorts were admired for their variegated colors,...