Extraordinary objects. Remarkable minds.
Stories worth discovering.
The Bruguier family’s Swiss singing-bird boxes concealed a performance beneath a painted landscape. Bellows supplied the voice and shaped metal controlled the movements; behind the familiar maker’s name were two Charleses, a son-in-law and a woman who pinned musical cylinders.
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James Glaisher arranged a laboratory across a balloon basket. On 5 September 1862, his instruments and his body began to fail at different speeds. Henry Coxwell had to bring them down—and the famous seven-mile height had to be worked out afterwards.
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Guillaume Le Gentil knew Manila had good observing weather. He left anyway. His voyage account explains the choice that took him to a ruined palace in Pondicherry for the transit of Venus—and records the observation made by the friend he left behind.
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Mary Kingsley’s 1895 fish collection had to survive bargaining, a shortage of alcohol and the Ogooué rapids. Three specimens from Kondo-Kondo eventually reached a London museum, where an adult and two young fish helped Albert Günther distinguish a new species.
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Jeanne Baret carried plant folders through the Strait of Magellan and kept working after Bougainville’s ships moved on. A Mauritian specimen and an abandoned botanical name help trace the labour behind a collection credited to Philibert Commerson.
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Mary Anning had a strange skeleton to sell and two wealthy customers to consider. Her letter from Lyme Regis reveals the judgement behind a price, before the fossil became a scientific sensation and a museum specimen.
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01 /Towards horizons not yet charted
02 /A world in a leaf, a wing, a stone
03 /When wonder became an instrument
04 /The art of giving curiosity a home
05 /When craftsmanship finds its voice
06 /The beautiful logic of things that work
Zeiss · Stativ Vb · 1881 catalogueA brass microscope. A maker and a physicist. Follow Carl Zeiss and Ernst Abbe into a story about the craft of seeing and the ideas behind it.
Take a closer look Authentic Zeiss Stativ Vb · Photograph: MikroSammlerA person. An instrument. A moment that changed the view.
We follow the traces of human curiosity.