Tag Archives for research

Where are the Women? Uncovering Hidden Connections to Calke Abbey’s Natural History Collection

Written by Julie Griffith, Property Experience Curator, Calke Abbey, National Trust.

Exploring the stories of Selina (1822-1905), Georgiana (1824-1910) and Matilda (1831-1899) Lovell, uncovers three curious and accomplished women. With interests in botany and conchology and stretching from Derbyshire to Australia, their story is of both individual achievement and natural history connecting sisters across the globe.

With existing narratives around Calke Abbey’s natural history collection overwhelmingly male focussed, recent research into the three Lovell sisters aims to bring women’s stories and connections to natural history into the spotlight at this country house property.

Selina Lovell (1822-1905). Credit: National Trust/David Midgelow
Georgiana Lovell (1824-1910). Credit: National Trust/Ian Buxton, David Midgelow and Brian Birch
Matilda Lovell (1831-1899). AI created image

Who were the Lovell sisters?

The Lovell sisters were closely related to the Harpur Crewe family of Calke Abbey through their mother, Selina Crewe (d.1838), a daughter of Sir Henry, Calke’s 7th Baronet and Nanny, Lady Crewe. Their father, Vice-Admiral William Stanhope Lovell (c.1788-1859) was a distinguished naval officer and veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar.

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Micro to Macro: Modelling and Magnifying Insects

Written by Maria Dragoi, PhD Candidate, UCL Institute of Archaeology & NHM Science.

Insects are very numerous, and very small. Their ubiquity and importance has meant that they need to be addressed in natural history galleries, but their minute size and fragile nature can make this a challenge. Various techniques have been developed to represent insects in galleries, including projection, illustration, and sculpture. This blog looks at model making as a technique used to enlarge insects for public displays at the Natural History Museum in London in the 20th century. It reflects on what magnification as a representation and display tactic does to how we construct a relationship with an insect.

I think something that’s important to remember about when we interact with insect models is that we know and recognise them as such. We are aware that they are not the thing in itself, but a representation of it. What we don’t often realise is that there needs to be a cultural schema around us for us to know and understand these things as representations. There’s some really interesting research by Pauline Kusiak on the use of projections to teach West African communities about the dangers of malaria in the early twentieth century. French Christian missionaries used new projection technology in order to show enlarged images of mosquitoes and their larvae to create awareness within these communities about the transmission of disease. At first it didn’t go very well, because the people that were shown the projections didn’t understand them as such. They told the French missionaries they clearly had no idea what was going on, because what they had shown was huge, a monster, whereas the insects that were known by communities to cause a problem were very small. Before using the model, or projection, as an educational tactic, the missionaries realised they first had to build up an understanding of what their representation technology was.

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Twisted Tales of Gallery Oldham’s Collection of Fish Casts

Written by Patricia Francis, Natural History Curator, Gallery Oldham. 

So, what’s a fish cast? Fish are particularly difficult creatures to preserve. Fish taxidermy is tricky as even a freshly dead specimen rapidly loses it colour and can quickly start to decay. Fish skin is thin and tears easily and obtaining the work of an experienced fish taxidermist is very expensive while fluid preservation involves the use of chemicals which alter the skin colouration.

Dace (1932-54 )

Modelling or casting is often chosen as an alternative way to represent the animal rather than using the actual fish skin as taxidermy does. A cast now might be made using a resin but historically plaster has been used. Then comes the clever bit, accurate painting of the cast to appear like the living animal.

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The Okapi: Biology, Conservation, and Why this Elusive Species matters to Collections

Written by Emma Winnard, Sixth form student studying A-level Biology, Chemistry, and Geology, with a strong interest in zoology, botany, and museum collections.

The okapi (Okapia johnstoni) is one of the most distinctive large mammals in the world, yet it remains one of the least well understood. Endemic to the dense tropical forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the okapi occupies an ecological niche that is both geographically restricted and extremely difficult to study directly. As a result, much of what we know about the species has been built not only from limited field observations, but also from museum specimens, archival records, and associated botanical and habitat material held in natural science collections.

This is what makes the okapi such a useful example for thinking about collections. When an animal is rarely seen, difficult to survey, and increasingly threatened, preserved specimens and older records can become far more than historical curiosities.

A pair of okapi in a lush forest setting. The species’ striped legs and dark coat help break up its outline in the dappled light of dense forest habitat.
© Photo by Brett Aukburg, via Pexels. Pexels Licence.

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Unpacking the Entanglements in Liverpool’s Lost Drawer of White-eyes.

By John-James Wilson, Lead Curator of Zoology, World Museum, National Museums Liverpool.

It started with the discovery of a letter tucked away in the collection history files. In 1948, the curator of the Raffles Museum in Singapore was trying to track down the type specimen of Zosterops difficilis (a subspecies of Mountain White-eye) and had written to the director at Liverpool Museum (now World Museum) to ask if the specimen was there. What began as a simple curiosity-led search for a single specimen quickly snowballed. This 77-year-old enquiry had suddenly launched me into a deep dive into entangled stories of colonial history, war time losses and bird taxonomy.

I found myself re-examining the records of 250 White-eye specimens from the Liverpool collection, many with outdated or ambiguous taxonomic names, obscure references in scientific literature, and possible name-bearing-status. My recent article – Ghosts and entanglements in one drawer of a natural history collection – explains how I cross-referenced historical documents, species descriptions, and records of specimens in other collections around the world to establish modern names and types status for these specimens.

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