For my project I wanted to connect back on my midterm since I really enjoyed the topic and material I was exploring. The change that I saw in Thomas Moffet’s “Insectorum Theatrum” and how to went from a scientific book to a collector’s item shows how the materiality of books not only shapes their preservation but also their meaning. It shows that a text’s physical evolution across time creates layers of interpretation that are just as significant as the content printed on the pages. My midterm focused specifically on the gilt edges as a “hinge point” in the book’s biography, and I found really funny by the irony that this book about collecting and classifying insects was itself collected and reclassified over time. For my final project, I want to make that parallel visual and tangible by literally curating specimens of the book’s material life the same way Moffet curated specimens of insect life.

I’m planning to create a shadow box/display case (think like a specimen box with the glass front and pinned insects) that contains physical samples and artifacts representing different phases of the Insectorum Theatrum’s material transformations. Each specimen will be carefully mounted, labeled with handwritten tags mimicking scientific specimen labels, and arranged to tell the story of the book’s evolution. The “specimens” I plan to include are marbled paper samples, gilded paper edges, tea-stained pages with insect illustration, fragments of Latin text, mock library materials, and “damage” samples. Each specimen will have a label card that identifies what material element it represents and what that element tells us about how the book was valued at that moment in history.

My purpose is to argue that we can’t separate the “text” of Moffet’s entomology from its physical forms, and that each material change represents a different reader claiming ownership over how the book should be valued. By presenting these material elements as “specimens” worthy of scientific examination, I’m making the case that a book’s physical biography deserves the same careful observation and classification that Moffet applied to beetles and butterflies. The book itself becomes the insect under study.