Collecting nature

a history of the herbarium and natural specimens

Clive Aslet, Svante Tirén

$130

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Miscellaneous
01 October 2025

Botany & plant sciences

The history of collecting natural history specimens touches upon many aspects of our past. The fascination with nature was at least as important for its view of humanity as for science.

One telling example is the Timm Collection at Engelsberg Ironworks, created by the ironworks proprietor Gabriel Casper Timm and his son Paul August in the nineteenth century. Throughout their lives, they devoted much of their leisure time to collecting plants, insects, minerals and other treasures of nature. Some came from near their home in Västmanland, Sweden, while others were collected from across Scandinavia. Father and son were in close contact with collectors and scientists and at the same time built up a library consisting of volumes on natural science along with books on spirituality and faith. Ultimately, collecting natural history specimens reflected a kind of wonder about creation.

The book places the Timm Collection in a larger context so that the reader encounters other collectors, thinkers and scientists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the book, a picture is created of how the world of ideas in collecting has developed and continues to influence us even today.

By: Clive Aslet, Svante Tirén
Imprint: Miscellaneous
Country of Publication: Sweden
Dimensions: Height: 300mm, Width: 235mm,
Weight: 1.240kg
ISBN: 9789189425644
ISBN 10: 9189425642
Pages: 166
Publication Date: 01 October 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Clive Aslet is an award-winning architectural historian and journalist. During a long association with Country Life, he was editor for 13 years. As author of The Edwardian Country House, The American Country House, Landmarks of Britain and Villages of Britain, he is an authority on the countryside, British history and architecture, and life at the turn of the twentieth century on both sides of the Atlantic. A lifelong advocate of Classicism, he helped establish the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture at Cambridge in 2021. Svante Helmbaek Tirén is a photographer and picture editor who has received acclaim for several of his photography books.

Reviews for Collecting nature: a history of the herbarium and natural specimens

Makes a collection of collections -- none of which will ever comprise the whole of what can be, but which offers a satisfying glimpse into the effort to understand what is.--Sarah Rose Sharp ""Hyperallergic""