Treasure hunting

I loved used bookstores. They are the main source of the paper and fragments I use in my work. I have a few favorite haunts in Cambridge and Boston and I visited one of them today. The Brattle Book Shop has been around since 1825, making it one of the oldest continuing operating bookshops in the whole country.

I bought a 1927 edition of Birds of Massachusetts and the New England States Vol. II and was startled to find all sorts of ephemera shoved in between the pages and covers. There were several scholarly journals and pamphlets, newspaper clippings, postcards, correspondence from 1930-1948, photographs of specimens and eggs, and a receipt for a passenger pigeon (!)

It was quite a find.

Friday Inspiration: Laughing Jackass

 

A recent treasure I found in my ephemeral wanderings...

Specimens

I spent a cold, grey afternoon at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. I'm fascinated by how the specimens are organized and labelled. Especially the extensive collection of hummingbirds. They are elegant and slightly disturbing at the same time.

Sometimes in order to understand the shape of things, I have to draw around them.

And I currently have the song Skip the Charades by Cold War Kids stuck in my head.


sketchbook copyright Kate Castelli 2011