The Natural History Museum Inspired This, Part 3... Nests and Eggs!!!

Good Morning, FinderMakers! During my last two semesters at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago I had the great pleasure of participating in a scientific illustration course that met within Chicago's venerable Field Museum of Natural History. I have worked for several prominent art museums over the years, and have always appreciated the privilege of having a "backstage pass", or unlimited access to stored artwork and areas of the museum that the regular patron doesn't often see. I had never been granted that special access in a natural history museum, however, and eagerly looked forward to each session of the illustration course, as the instructor went to great lengths to expose the depth and breadth of natural wonders held therein for us study and draw from.

One session was held amid thousands of bottles containing preserved specimens of ocean life forms; another took us into a room densely populated by live colonies of dermestid beetles, busily stripping various animal carcasses down to the clean, white bone. One afternoon, a friendly Ornithologist showed up with a small bird that had perished after flying into a window, and demonstrated the process of bird taxidermy from start to finish; afterwards we were invited into a storeroom in which many compartmentalized storage boxes full of various bird eggs and nests had been set out for us to draw. I was quite taken with the beauty and diversity of the eggs, and have always marveled at the ingenuity of the feathered architects who build their cozy homes from grasses and twigs, or whatever other suitable material is at hand (or beak, I suppose!).

A couple of years later, I was ambling along the shore at Stinson Beach, north of San Francisco, and noticed that a stormy tide the night before had washed up countless long wisps of fine, dark seaweed tangled together with ribbons of seagrass roots, feathers, and other little bits of natural shoreline detritus. All of these masses gave the impression of bird's nests having been unwound and strewn about the sand. Of course they weren't, but I determined that I should collect as much of the stuff as I could conveniently handle, and set about figuring how I might turn it into convincingly realistic faux bird's nests!

I think the conversion was very successful, and was achieved thusly: I simply soaked the tangled masses in water so that they became pliable, then straightened them out and carefully wrapped portions around the bulbous end of several different-sized laboratory boiling flasks to achieve the characteristic nest shape. I then wrapped each wet "nest" loosely with twine so that it would stay in place, and somewhat compressed, on the flask, and set them all out in the sun to dry. When they were all dried out, I simply unwound the twine and slipped them off the flasks... bird's nests!







Oology is the term used to describe the collection and study of eggs, and although the practice of collecting eggs from nests in the wild is now quite illegal in most localities, the practice was wildly popular amongst hobbyist collectors during the 19th, and into the 20th centuries. I enjoy the look of eggs, but wouldn't dare collect them in the wild. In the photo below, I have constructed a wooden box, 12" long x 8" wide x 4" deep, with Plexiglas interior dividers, to display my homemade nests in. A sheet of glass slides into grooves cut into the side walls of the box to cover and protect the contents.



For eggs, I purchased a few dozen quail eggs from a Japanese market (sold for culinary purposes... not hatching) and pierced them on each end and blew out the contents. Some of these I painted white, others I left natural: brown and cream speckles. I also added a few colored artificial eggs from the craft store for variety, and, believe it or not, the easter candy aisle at your local drug store will be a great source for good looking eggs in the coming months. I have a few candy-coated chocolate eggs in there as well!!!

Below is a lovely book of mine that allows the bird enthusiast to identify birds by the appearance of their eggs. I don't spend much time peering into birds nests out in the wild, but I certainly do enjoy perusing the beautiful images of eggs and related information in this book!





And, finally... The esteemed artist Rosamond Purcell has published a book of her beautiful egg and nest photographs, many of which were exhibited at the wonderful Harvard Museum of Natural History last year. I have yet to see the book in person, but have no doubt that it will be stunning!



I Thank You for joining me for the third installment of "The Natural History Museum Inspired This!" and do look forward to sharing with you again soon!

The Natural History Museum Inspired This! Part Two: Minerals

In my first post in the series "The Natural History Museum Inspired This!" I presented a display I crafted based on the stuffed bird specimens installed at Boston's Harvard Museum of Natural History. Today I would like to share another piece I did that was inspired by the museum's impressive Mineralogical wing (pictured below).



The display below doesn't look like much when it isn't lit. It is a wood lightbox I made, about 14 inches wide x 17 inches tall, and 4 inches deep. The face is 4-ply mat board; I used a mat cutter to cut 12 bevelled windows into it, behind which are affixed my mineral images.



To create the images, I used a technique I developed many years ago that involves layering color transparencies, carefully aligned so as to create a subtle sense of dimension; the use of more than one layer of imagery also saturates the colors, lending an intense, gem-like quality to the images. The area around each mineral image is blacked out from behind, so that the light only shines directly through the mineral. The result when lit is, I think, quite lovely to behold!



And it looks even better in a completely dark room:





Although I wouldn't go so far as to consider myself a "rockhound" I have long enjoyed casually collecting specimens that catch my eye, some of which I display in the metal box pictured below:



I recently picked up a box of these "Ed-U-Cards" from the 1960's that feature a mineral image on the front and give detailed information on the back of each card. They are pretty neat, and have some nice mineral images.



Last month I was at a bookstore and was excited to see contemporary reprints of many of the old "Golden Guide" field guide books that I remember from my childhood, including my much loved "Rocks, Gems and Minerals"! While the cover has changed, everything inside is exactly as I remembered it, including the vividly colored illustrations!







Below is an excerpt on Geiger counters from the book, and a picture of my own bright yellow Geiger counter (great fun in determining the radioactivity of vaseline glass and original red-glazed Fiesta ware!)







Thank You for joining me for part two of "The Natural History Museum Inspired This!" and now please excuse me while I begin preparing the third installment in the series!

Birch Bark, Spruce Root, and Cedar Containers

In this follow-up to my earlier post on Birch Bark and Spruce Root harvesting, I offer three examples of containers I crafted using my newly harvested natural materials! The body of each cylindrical container is of thin birch bark, stitched together using split spruce root lashing. The bottom of each is a disk of cedar wood, though the smaller container features a cedar wood disk in the construction of the lid as well. I can't claim to have devised the idea for these myself; I was (and continue to be) inspired by Jonathan Ridgeon's excellent "Bushcraft" site, which features an easy-to-follow tutorial on birch bark containers. I deviated slightly from the tutorial in the construction of the lid, which is basically a shorter version of the body inverted, and fits onto a birch-strip "lip" set into the upper rim of the body.

Old Fashioned Red and White Specimen Labels

An inquisitive FinderMaker wondered where I had found the red and white labels featured in the previous post, and although the source is no longer around, I am delighted to be able to offer some images and PDFs from which you can print your own sheets of labels. These are true labeling classics; try printing them out on sticker paper for inkjet printers, or print on the paper of your choosing and affix with a glue stick, or print them out on cardstock, punch a hole in the corner, and use as a hang tag! Their appeal stretches far beyond holiday use; enlist them in the identification of your various specimen collections (im assuming each of you has stacks of old cigar boxes stuffed with shells, buttons, bones, stones and bric a brac?), affix them to your journal with a date and "HANDS OFF" typed on, or stick them on old bottles and jars with stuff inside (Pinecones? Beach glass? Salt crystals from your trip to the Bonneville salt flats? Sand from White Sands National Monument?) to give your collection that special "science chic" appeal! Have fun! Happy Holidays!


These are 1.5" x 2.75" Click Here to download the print-friendly PDF


These are 2.25" x 4" Click here to download the print-friendly PDF

Gift Wrap, FinderMaker Style.

Happy Holidays! I've been getting into the spirit by finishing up several handmade gifts, and doing some wrapping using materials I had around the studio: Birch bark, white craft paper (inexpensive and comes in big rolls from Michael's; I use it to cover my work surface before starting a messy project), cotton string, old-fashioned labels, and a sprig of spruce! Simple, elegant, and affordable!

The Natural History Museum Inspired This! (part 1)

For me, a day spent in a natural history museum is always a day well spent! One of my favorites, The Harvard Museum of Natural History, also happens to be rather nearby. I've been visiting on a fairly regular basis for years now, and the exhibits there have definitely inspired many of my creative crafts projects. I thought it might be fun to share a few of my favorites that I've made through the years!



"Songbirds" is a pretty big (30" x 36") display that I made about six years ago after finding an old shoebox full of decorative birds at a flea market outside of Chicago. There was such a nice variety of birds in that shoebox; it was like finding an instant collection, so I decided it would be a shame not to keep them all together as a group! I have always enjoyed seeing the various ways that birds are displayed at museums, and determined that I should construct my own display based loosely on some of those at the Harvard Museum.

The background wedges consist of canvas stretched over pieces of Gator Board (a tougher, more rigid form of foamcore) then painted. The title letters are die-cut cardboard letters I found as a set at a thrift store and painted to complement the blue-green background. The birds are perched on painted wooden dowels mounted onto the background; they are each numbered with old-fashioned numbered map pins that correspond to a list of feathered warblers that I silkscreened onto the bottom center triangle. The display is six inches deep, and is a little difficult to photograph well because of its protective Plexiglas face! Following are a few detail photographs:







I Thank You for joining me, and hope you will join me again when I post the next installment of "The Natural History Museum Inspired This!"

Recent Finds #2 and More Relics of the Old Whaling Days

Earlier in the month, Anne and I took a drive down to Mystic, Connecticut to experience B.F. Clyde's, the only steam-powered apple cider mill in the U.S. It was a lovely fall day; perfect weather for apple cider and cider donuts! Amply nourished, we commenced a lazy automobile tour of the area, and ended up poking around a few antiques stores and a fun Goodwill store in Groton, Connecticut. The Goodwill visit yielded the glass-domed dried weed arrangement pictured above for a more than reasonable .99 cents, and a very old pad of manila paper for .50 cents: perfect for any project calling for old-looking labels or tags!

A local antiques shop made for some entertaining browsing, but my purchase was limited to a small corked bottle of mysterious oil, procured for $2.99. I desperately wanted it to be an old bottle of whale oil to enhance my modest collection of nautical and whaling related artifacts, and it might well be, though it was unlabeled, and the thoroughly stuck cork will prevent me from ever truly knowing!

I thought the little bottle rather closely resembled some I had seen in a whaling display at Mystic Seaport. The display featured a wooden box containing bottled samples of oil taken from each whale captured during the 1875-1878 voyage of the whaleship Ohio:







Curious to glean a bit more information regarding what a bottle of whale oil might look like, I searched the online object collection of the wonderful Whaling Museum in nearby New Bedford, Massachusetts, and was intrigued by an entry for a bottle of "Spermacity [sic] taken direct from the cooling tank by the cooper on the last voyage of the Charles W. Morgan". Below is a picture of the bottle, courtesy of the Whaling Museum:





The Charles W. Morgan is the only surviving wooden whaleship from the 1800's. It is on permanent display at Mystic Seaport, where it is currently undergoing a thorough restoration. Though the Whaling Museum's aluminum foil-topped bottle of "spermacity" might leave something to be desired aesthetically, I was greatly impressed by the powerfully evocative nature of such an artifact; I couldn't help but imagine the cooper's urgent desire to preserve a little bit of that slippery stuff that had been the Morgan's very raison d'être, on what he knew would be the last of her 37 successful whaling voyages.

Thusly inspired and, as ever, not much of a stickler for authenticity, I determined that, for my own enjoyment, my little bottle of mystery oil might easily be transformed into an artifact of the old whaling days. The real value of any artifact on display, whether authentic or not, is it's power to vividly evoke a sense of the time or circumstance during which the object originated. That old "spermacity" bottle in the Whaling Museum might actually contain castor oil for all I know, but it's very existence captivated me and, in turn, led me to further investigate records of the Charles W. Morgan's final voyage (peruse the actual logbook from her last voyage here). The potential for an object to tell a story and inspire exploration and learning has long been a source of interest to me; indeed it was the impetus for my creation of the National Museum of Hospital and Pharmaceutical History, but alas, I digress...

My .50 cent pad of antique manila paper proved the perfect material on which to type up a label for my little bottle of "whale oil". The label reads, simply: "Oil from the last whale taken by the Charles W. Morgan, 05/21/1921". Serendipitously, the glass dome that had housed a display of dried weeds was perfectly suited to the protection and enhancement of my new artifact, and was made ready by merely removing the weeds and adding a flat disk of cork for the bottle to sit upon. The result:



Thank You for joining me, and happy autumnal days to you all!!!