Annrose Curiosities

'Dancing Fox with Lotus-leaf Hat' (1900s–1910s) by Ohara Koson (Japanese, 1878–1945).

Woodblock print.

Common Juniper (Juniperus Communis).

Taken from 'American Medical Botany' by Jacob Bigelow.

Published 1817 by Cummings and Hilliard.

Missouri Botanical Garden.

✯•´*¨`*•✿ Litha Altar ✿•*`¨*•✯

Rose bouquet & strawberry offerings from my garden.

A Sparrow-Parts Feathursday

Today we present another Charles Tunnicliffe study, this time of the common House Sparrow (Passer domesticus). As common as these birds are, they never cease to fascinate us. Tunnicliffe (1901-1979), a renowned naturalist artist and illustrator (and also a very fine wood engraver), would sometimes do studies from dead bird specimens, as he apparently has here. He writes:

I am fortunate . . . in knowing an expert ornithologist, who is a fine taxidermist and a keeper of a museum. Sometimes, when a fresh specimen arrived at his museum he would allow me to make my studies of the bird before he made it up into a skin for his cabinet collection.

These studies are reproduced in Bird Portraiture (“How To Do It” Series No. 35), published in London and New York by The Studio in 1945, another donation from our friend Tony Drehfal.

View more posts with works by Charles Tunnicliffe.

Floral cards (France, 1840-1860).

Botanical illustrations taken from 'A New British Flora' by A. R. Horwood, J. N. Fitch.

Published 1919 by Gresham Pub. Co.

New York Botanical Garden, LuEsther T. Mertz Library.