Strange and Wonderful

Let me now direct you to BibliOdyssey, who’ve posted some wonderfully bizarre pictures of wildlife, engraved by a man called De Seve in the late 18th century, for natural history books by the likes of Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber, a student of the great Carolus Linneaus.

The absurd rendering of many of the animals comes about because the engravers/artists working on the project did not actually see the animals. They had to rely on descriptions and their imagination and, as was the fashion of the time, the animals were placed in contrived settings and often given human facial qualities, which only serves to heighten the sense of bizarre.

Thanks to Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing!

Add comment November 26th, 2006