The Paper Zoo: 500 Years of Animals in Art

About this book

As children our first encounters with the worlds animals do not arise during expeditions through faraway jungles or on perilous mountain treks. Instead we meet these creatures between the pages of a book on the floor of an obliging library. Down through the centuries illustrated books have served as our paper zoos both documenting the worlds extraordinary wildlife in exquisite detail and revealing in hindsight how our relationship to and understanding of these animals have evolved over time. In this stunning book historian of science Charlotte Sleigh draws on the ultimate bibliophiles menageriethe collections of the British Libraryto present a lavishly illustrated homage to this historical collaboration between art and science. Gathering together a breathtaking range of nature illustrations from manuscripts prints drawings and rare printed books from across the world Sleigh brings us face to face (or face to tentacle) with images of butterflies beetles and spiders of shells fish and coral polyps. Organized into four themed sectionsexotic native domestic and paradoxicalthe images introduce us to some of the worlds most renowned natural history illustrators from John James Audubon to Mark Catesby and Ernst Haeckel as well as to lesser-known artists. In her accompanying text Sleigh traces the story of the art of natural history from the Renaissance through the great age of exploration and into the nineteenth century offering insight into the changing connections between the natural and human worlds. But the story does not end there. From caterpillars to crabs langurs to dugongs stick insects to Old English pigs; from the sinuous tail feathers of birds of paradise to the lime-green wings of New Zealands enormous flightless parrot the kakapo; from the crenellated plates of a tortoises shell to imagined likenesses of unicorns mermaids and dinosaurs the story continues in this book. It is a Paper Zoo for all time.