Category Archives for Historical collections

Seeing With Their Eyes A Poetic Reflection on the 2025 ‘From Collections to Connections’ NatSCA Conference Presentation

Written by Pauline Rutter – Independent Archival Artist, Community and Organisation Poet.

These words look out from the page with eyes I have borrowed. Eyes not shaped for vision through the specific disciplinary scientific lens. Eyes that strain to see beyond past centuries of debate on what, of all origins, is knowable and what is not. With these original eyes, would ways of seeing allow the light to travel outwards resisting funnelled perspectives and interpretations descended from imperialistic systems of Enlightenment science, colonial ideologies and narratives? In this context my eyes had opened up unevolved or re-evolved with lepidopteran vision, though not removed from all that had been taught to be seen. New eyes with sight of intensified colour that amplified nature’s interconnecting patterns, only visible outside the spectrum of the everyday, the expected, the predetermined. 

What use is butterfly sight that transforms configured objects and living matter with or without full binominal species names, into fragments like those of the intertwined and metamorphosed elements in ritualistic rapture spreading out across a Wangechi Mutu collage? 

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Moving a ‘Monster’ – the Ups and Downs of Exhibiting a Japanese Spider Crab

Written by Hannah Clarke – Assistant Curator (Collections Access), University of Aberdeen.

In May this year, I was given the slightly terrifying task of overseeing the removal and transportation of Aberdeen University’s much-loved Japanese Spider Crab (Macrocheira kaempferi) specimen. The crab, who is usually proudly displayed in the foyer of the University’s Zoology Building, had been requested for loan by Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums, for their exciting new exhibition ‘Monsters of the Deep.’

The crab had previously been removed during renovation work in 2019, without hiccup, so recalling how ‘straightforward’ this had been last time, I was confident that we could get the crab removed, cleaned, packed, and ready for transport in just under three days.

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A Refresher Course on Fluid Specimen Conservation at the Natural History Museum of Denmark

Written by Anastasia van Gaver (Conservator) & Bethany Palumbo (Head of Conservation) Natural History Museum Denmark).

Workshop participants and Julian Carter

As conservators, it’s essential we keep up to date with developments in the techniques used in specimen treatments. With hundreds of fluid-preserved specimens to make and conserve for the new exhibitions at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, we sought the best in the field to give us a refresher course. Esteemed expert Julian Carter arrived fresh off the plane from Cardiff and over 3 days we explored different techniques for preserving and mounting specimens and well as discussing the unique challenges we face when conserving these invaluable scientific resources.

Example of three fluid specimens prepared by the conservation team for the new Natural History Museum of Denmark

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A Time Capsule of Extinction: Scotland’s Iconic Wildlife

Written by Caitlin Jamison, Museum Collection Technician, Montrose Museum: ANGUSalive.

Montrose Museum in Angus, northeast Scotland, houses an impressive natural history collection. Everything from taxidermy to fossils to rare minerals are housed in a modest, Greek-revival style museum off the high street. Built in 1842, it is one of the first purpose-built museums in Scotland.

Sadly, due to changing public interest (and the challenging funding situation facing many local authority museums) the collection has been somewhat forgotten since it was catalogued onto neat pink index cards in the late 1970s.

Montrose Museum’s 1970s card catalogue (author’s own photo)
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Packing the Blaschka Glass Models 

Written by Julian Carter, Principal Conservator Natural Sciences, Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, Cardiff

During the late 19th century, Leopold Blaschka (1822-1895) and his son Rudolf (1857-1929) produced thousands of beautifully detailed glass models of a wide range of sea creatures, and other animals, for natural history museums and aquaria all over the world. The work has since been hailed as “an artistic marvel in the field of science and a scientific marvel in the field of art”. The work of the Blaschka’s remains remarkably contemporary today, working as they did on the cusp of design, craft, and industry. Crossing the boundaries of science and art, the surviving models today have a value that makes them irreplaceable. 

The idea for making lifelike renditions of sea creatures out of glass arose from the difficulty of preserving and displaying soft-bodied animals such as jellyfish, marine worms, and sea anemones. Preserving such animals in a lifelike way is difficult as techniques such as fluid preservation cause colours to quickly fade and shapes to become distorted. Leopold Blaschka devised a solution to this problem by using his glass working skills to accurately model these animals out of glass and other materials available to him and went on to establish a successful business supplying glass models to museums worldwide during the latter half of the 19th century. 

The model of the sea anemone Actinia mesembryanthum (right) based on a plate (left) from Phillip Henry Gosse’s Actinologia britannica. A history of the British sea-anemones and corals which Leopold Blaschka used for the early sea anemone models that he built.
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