Frances Billings' Very Sweet Seventh Grade Herbarium, c. 1910s-20s Seattle carver copper engraving on wove

copper engraving on wove

spanning 1st grade to high school

the cryptic note

There is a strong Inuit tradition of carving human and owl faces from whale vertebrae

Images show each square labelled with a letter

Frances Billings' Very Sweet Seventh Grade Herbarium, c. 1910s-20s Seattle carver copper engraving on woveA very sweet group of 24 "nature studies," housed in a cloth covered three ring binder though those binder rings pull at the holes in the somewhat brittle paper, making them not so easy to flip through so I'd keep them loose inside, or get some of these into frames. Sometimes one loves love herbarium for their exquisiteness, and sometimes for the humble earnestness this is more the latter, but really very lovely too. I love the paper they were done