Category Archives for Projects

Creating a New Diorama at the Booth Museum of Natural History

Editors note: This is the second of two concurrent blogs about the new diorama at the Booth Museum. Click here to read the first and find out more about how the diorama was created.

Written by Su Hepburn, Head of Learning & Engagement, Brighton & Hove Museums.

Jazmine Miles-Long, Taxidermist © Laurence Dean Photography

Why a new diorama?

In the autumn of 2022, we started our ‘Discover our Dioramas’ project at the Booth Museum of Natural History, part of Brighton & Hove Museums. Funded by an Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund of £50,000 we set about building the first natural history diorama at the museum in 92 years. This was a significant project for a museum whose Victorian creator Edward Booth had lined every wall with dioramas of birds. Dioramas are an ideal way of storytelling. They are visual and can get a lot of key information to audiences without the need for words.

Alongside this we were also given £3000 from Rampion Windfarms to research and display more information about people especially women involved in the museum’s history. 

These projects gave us the time and space to be playful and to make friends. To impact on our audiences, our staff, our collections, and our future practices. It has brought joy to the museum, visitor and staff alike. 

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Creating a New Diorama for The Booth Museum of Natural History – Taxidermy, Silk flowers and Wax Slugs.

Editors note: This is the first of two concurrent blogs about the new diorama at the Booth Museum, you can read the second one here.

Written by Jazmine Miles Long, Taxidermist. https://www.jazminemileslong.com, Twitter: @TaxidermyLondon; Instagram: @Jazmine_miles_long

The Booth Museum of Natural History was founded in 1874 by naturalist and collector, Edward Thomas Booth. Mr Booth collected a huge variety of British birds and was a pioneer of the taxidermy ‘diorama’, displaying birds in their natural habitat. His collection of over 300 detailed cases were donated to the city of Brighton in 1891 with the proviso the dioramas would not be changed. In 1971 the Booth became a Museum of Natural History. Today alongside the dioramas the museum has a huge collection of 525,000 insects, 50,000 minerals and rocks, 30,000 plants and 5,000 microscopic slides.

Life in the Garden. Image credit: Laurence Dean.
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Dropping a Pin on the Salter Collection

Written by George Seddon-Roberts, PhD Student, John Innes Centre, work completed whilst on placement as a Curatorial Intern at Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales.

When accessing an entomology collection, there are a few things that a researcher can expect to find. Each specimen should be pinned with labels describing its species and information about where it was collected – two valuable pieces of information which can help researchers to trace the specimen’s origin geographically and in time. Knowing where and when a specimen was collected can help researchers better understand the historical landscape and ecology and make predictions into the future. However, when collections receive specimens from private collectors, this standard of labelling might not be met. As part of a 3-month internship at Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, I aimed to transform one such collection.

The collection in context 

John Henry Salter (1862-1942) was an academic and naturalist, who spent much of his life as a lecturer at University College of Wales in Aberystwyth, where he would later be appointed as the first Professor of Botany. Outside of academia, Salter was a prolific collector of insects across several groups, most notably including coleoptera (beetles) and lepidoptera (butterflies and moths). Salter’s collection contains specimens from across Wales, as well as England, Tenerife and south-east France; regions where he spent time during his retirement. The specimens, which amount to over 15,000 individuals, were meticulously recorded in field logs by Salter, which were also donated to the museum with the collection.  

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Mary De La Beche: Lady Lepidopterist

Written by Kanchi Mehta, 2nd year BSc student, Swansea University, whilst on placement at National Museum Cardiff and Swansea Museum.

Born in Swansea in June 1839, the young Mary grew up in a house where she had every freedom. Taught in politics, photography, languages, art and science, young Mary was a smart, outspoken, and opinionated girl. As she grew up, she learnt from her father, Lewis Llewelyn Dillwyn, in the forests and beaches around Swansea. Over the years, she took a particular interest in the biology around her family home and kept that interest throughout her life.

She married in Sketty Church to John Cole Nicholl in 1860. He shared her adoration for the outdoors and over the course of their honeymoon the couple went all over Europe seeing the sights, scaling every mountain they could and documenting it all in their diaries. Mary alone filled roughly six diaries with her thoughts on the nature she saw, the people she met and the languages she learnt all accompanied by her sketches. By the Christmas of 1860, the pair made it home with two puppies in tow, brought for Mary by John, and a baby on the way.

© Grandmother Extraordinary by Hilary M. Thomas
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Going ‘Extinct’ for Jewellery

Written by Sonal Mistry (Masters Students in Scientific Illustration, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands) and Olivia Beavers (Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at World Museum, National Museums Liverpool).

Last year, Sonal approached the vertebrate zoology team at World Museum Liverpool to see the Nicobar Pigeon taxidermy mounts, study skins, as well as the Liverpool Pigeon study skin and dodo skeleton to use as reference for her work. From the first meeting, it was fascinating to see the detailed nature of her initial sketches and how quickly she worked.

World Museum has received requests from wood carvers and illustrators to access the osteology collection, taxidermy mounts and/or study skins as a reference for their work. The in-person visits help them to create more accurate drawings and carvings compared to using 2D images for reference. 

Collaborating with researchers of a particular species or family broadens our understanding of the collections. For example, Sonal’s explanation of her university assignment shed light on the endangered status of Nicobar Pigeons and the unconventional use of their gizzard stones in jewellery which I was unaware of.

Sonal is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Scientific Illustration, at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Her passion for the sciences and the arts enriches her illustrations with a unique quality that is evident in her diverse projects, showcasing a blend of creativity and scientific accuracy.

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