Nature can be collected in many forms and shapes: live animals have been locked up in cages, displayed in zoos and menageries and their hides and dried body parts have been used as part of installations in galleries and studies. Plants from far-away countries have been cultivated in botanical gardens and in hothouses. Furthermore, the depiction of medicinal plants and of prized animals was regarded as an important part of the decorative schemes, in an attempt to bring nature indoors. Recent research has also shown that artificialia and naturalia were displayed side by side in early modern Europe—sometimes in the company of scientifica—and that the exhibition set-up often included a complex arrangement of stables, kennels, aviaries, art gallery and library. Villas and country houses displayed favourite horses as well as paintings and antiquities. Botanical gardens and gardens of simples at monastic foundations and universities imposed order and intellectual scope to the cultivation of many new species imported to Europe during the age of exploration. Of particular interest to the mission of this working group is the fact that so many collections of naturalia were displayed in close proximity to other collecting categories, according to a similar choreography as well as according to a similar logistical set-up. Thus, the collections, outdoors as well as indoors, resemble one another in terms of labels adopted and discussions conducted on the respective merits of order and categorisation. The essays in the present volume, therefore, connect art, nature and science by tracing objects, as well as the practices of collecting and display from the early kunst- und wunderkammern to the more scientific aspirations and publications of the eighteenth century. Indoor as well as outdoor locations of collecting are considered as well as the dissemination of objects and knowledge in the form of books during a period, which gradually led from an intrinsic, if untidy, connection between art and nature towards a new world of clear, if unhappy, divisions.

Interposed between the natural world in all its diversity and the edited form in which we encounter it in literature, imagery and the museum, lie the multiple practices of the naturalists in selecting, recording and preserving the specimens from which our world view is to be reconstituted. The factors that weigh at every stage are here dissected, analysed and set within a historical narrative that spans more than five centuries. During that era, every aspect evolved and changed, as engagement with nature moved from a speculative pursuit heavily influenced by classical scholarship to a systematic science, drawing on advanced theory and technology. Far from being neutrally objective, the process of representing nature is shown as fraught with constraint and compromise. With a Foreword by Sir David Attenborough Contributors are: Marie Addyman, Peter Barnard, Paul D. Brinkman, Ian Convery, Peter Davis, Felix Driver, Florike Egmond, Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, Geoff Hancock, Stephen Harris, Hanna Hodacs, Stuart Houston, Dominik Huenniger, Rob Huxley, Charlie Jarvis, Malgosia Nowak-Kemp, Shepard Krech III, Mark Lawley, Arthur Lucas, Marco Masseti, Geoff Moore, Pat Morris, Charles Nelson, Robert Peck, Helen Scales, Han F. Vermeulen, and Glyn Williams.

This fully realized colour catalogue includes elegant contemporary illustrations of every animal, plant or mineral cited in Syme's edition of “Werner's nomenclature of colours”

Virginia Woolf and the Natural World is a compilation of thirty-one essays presented at the twentieth annual international conference on Virginia Woolf. This volume explores Woolf's complex engagement with the natural world, an engagement that was as political as it was aesthetic. The diversity of topics within this collection-ecofeminism, the nature of time, the nature of the self, nature and sporting, botany, climate, and landscape, just to name a few-fosters a deeper understanding of the nature of nature in Woolf's works. Contributors include Bonnie Kime Scott, Carrie Rohman, Diana Swanson, Elisa Kay Sparks, Beth Rigel Daugherty, Jane Goldman, and Diane Gillespie, among many others from the international community of Woolf scholars.

In 1500 few Europeans regarded nature as a subject worthy of inquiry. Yet fifty years later the first museums of natural history had appeared in Italy, dedicated to the marvels of nature. Italian patricians, their curiosity fueled by new voyages of exploration and the humanist rediscovery of nature, created vast collections as a means of knowing the world and used this knowledge to their greater glory. Drawing on extensive archives of visitors' books, letters, travel journals, memoirs, and pleas for patronage, Paula Findlen reconstructs the lost social world of Renaissance and Baroque museums. She follows the new study of natural history as it moved out of the universities and into sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scientific societies, religious orders, and princely courts. Findlen argues convincingly that natural history as a discipline blurred the border between the ancients and the moderns, between collecting in order to recover ancient wisdom and the development of new textual and experimental scholarship. Her vivid account reveals how the scientific revolution grew from the constant mediation between the old forms of knowledge and the new.

Essays by Valerie C. Doran, Richard Rosenblum.

Discover Earth's most beautiful and fascinating natural landmarks. From the spectacular granite domes of Yosemite to the reefs of the Bahama Banks and the ice sheets of the Antarctic, this is an unparalleled survey of the world's natural treasures. From the Rocky Mountains to the Great barrier Reef and everything in between, Natural Wonders of the World combines breathtaking landscape photography and illustrations with 3-D terrain models and other explanatory artworks to reveal what lies beneath the surface and explain the geological processes to show how the features were formed. Plants and animals that inhabit each environment are also included, making Natural Wonders of the World a complete celebration of our world. Produced in association with the Smithsonian Institution.

The phenomenon of collecting as a systematic activity undertaken for symbolic rather than actual needs, is traditionally taken to originate in the middle of the fifteenth century, when the first cabinets of curiosities appear in Italy. Yet it is clear that the practice of collecting started long before that, indeed its origins can be traced back thousands of years to European prehistoric communities. Whilst this early genesis is, due to lack of written records, still shrouded in much mystery, The Nature of Classical Collecting argues that the collecting practices of classical Greece and Rome offer a rich tapestry of experiences which can be reconstructed to illuminate a pivotal period in the long and ever developing phenomenon of collecting. Utilizing a wide variety of examples of classical collections - including grave goods, the accumulations of Greek temples and open-air shrines, the royal collections of Hellenistic kings, Roman art and curiosity collections, and relics - The Nature of Classical Collecting focuses on the field of the 'pre-history' of collecting, a neglected yet critical phase that helped crystallize the western concept of collecting. Drawing primarily on Latin writings from the period 100 BCE to 100 CE it shows how collecting underwent a transition from a religious and political activity, to an intellectual practice in which connoisseurship could impart social status. It also demonstrates how the appreciation of objects and artists changed as new qualities were attributed to material culture, resulting in the establishment of art markets, patronage and an interest in the history of art. By exploring these early developments, The Nature of Classical Collecting not only provides a fascinating insight into the culture of late Hellenistic/early Imperial Roman collecting, but also offers a much fuller grounding for understanding the influences and inspirations of those Renaissance collectors who themselves were to have such a profound influence on the course of European art, architecture and culture.

“An anthology of nature writing by people of color, providing deeply personal connections to—or disconnects from—nature.” —NPR From African American to Asian American, indigenous to immigrant, “multiracial” to “mixed-blood,” the diversity of cultures in this world is matched only by the diversity of stories explaining our cultural origins: stories of creation and destruction, displacement and heartbreak, hope and mystery. With writing from Jamaica Kincaid on the fallacies of national myths, Yusef Komunyakaa connecting the toxic legacy of his hometown, Bogalusa, LA, to a blind faith in capitalism, and bell hooks relating the quashing of multiculturalism to the destruction of nature that is considered “unpredictable”—among more than thirty-five other examinations of the relationship between culture and nature—this collection points toward the trouble of ignoring our cultural heritage, but also reveals how opening our eyes and our minds might provide a more livable future. Contributors: Elmaz Abinader, Faith Adiele, Francisco X. Alarcón, Fred Arroyo, Kimberly Blaeser, Joseph Bruchac, Robert D. Bullard, Debra Kang Dean, Camille Dungy, Nikky Finney, Ray Gonzalez, Kimiko Hahn, bell hooks, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Pualani Kanaka’ole Kanahele, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Jamaica Kincaid, Yusef Komunyakaa, J. Drew Lanham, David Mas Masumoto, Maria Melendez, Thyllias Moss, Gary Paul Nabhan, Nalini Nadkarni, Melissa Nelson, Jennifer Oladipo, Louis Owens, Enrique Salmon, Aileen Suzara, A. J. Verdelle, Gerald Vizenor, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Al Young, Ofelia Zepeda “This notable anthology assembles thinkers and writers with firsthand experience or insight on how economic and racial inequalities affect a person’s understanding of nature . . . an illuminating read.” —Bloomsbury Review “[An] unprecedented and invaluable collection.” —Booklist

These decks feature full-color illustrations created exclusively for this special series, with different artwork on every card. The deck contains 54 cards.