{"product_id":"paper-zoo-book-charlotte-sleigh-9780712357432","title":"Paper Zoo","description":"The Paper Zoo traces the varied and vital role of natural history illustration in science and art since the fifteenth century. Sumptuous images from giants of the genre - such as the birds of John J. Audubon, or the insects of Maria Sybilla Merian - accompany less familiar but equally intriguing illustrations from manuscripts, journals, and rare printed books. Together, these works represent a collection of nature's wonders. Birds, butterflies, insects, mammals, reptiles, and fish were immortalised in print; pests and curiosities were wondered at; microorganisms made monsters. Travellers brought home, on paper, exotic creatures. Scholars and hobbyists insisted upon the beauty and significance of native creatures, both wild and domesticated - even cows and clothes moths.Charlotte Sleigh shows how the styles and purposes of natural history illustration evolved, from animal alphabets to the extraordinary productions of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century naturalists and explorers recording and classifying the living world.She pays tribute to the achievements of little-known, unsung painters and colourists, alongside famous artists, in this mighty endeavour of collecting, defining and exhibiting animal life on the page. Here, too, were ironies and contradictions: many naturalists were also hunters, and the dodo and the great auk survive only in paper zoos. Selected for the Spectator's Best Art Books of 2016.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49503994347793,"sku":"GOR007815408","price":14.7,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50303952060689,"sku":"GOR011066563","price":14.6,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0712357432.jpg?v=1751199815","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/products\/paper-zoo-book-charlotte-sleigh-9780712357432","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}