We've got our hands on one of the original editions of Sherman F. Denton's epic Moths and Butterflies of the United States East of the Rocky Mountains (1900) published in the 19th century and want to share with you the marvellous illustrations from this publication. Be ready to get inspired by the incredible details created by the direct transfers from the real butterflies themselves. The bodies are printed from engravings and then colored by hand. In order to create all 500 editions, Denton and his team had to collect ten's of thousands of butterflies. Conservation was not uppermost in people's minds at this time.
"It's the aim of the present work to represent our native butterflies and moths not as dried and mutilated specimens in a cabinet, with pins stuck to them, nor as dissected fragments for scientific clarification, but as one sees them in our woods and fields, fresh and lovely." ( United States East of the Rocky Mountains 1900, Preface)
