The Linnaean's reading room smells, faintly and unmistakably, of vellum. I have spent four weeks here drawing specimens that have been pressed and labelled for nearly three centuries.
What I had not anticipated is how much the archive would teach me about omission. Each card carries a name, a place, a date — but also, in the small marginal annotations, the ghost of a hand that decided what could be left out.
I have been trying to draw in the same spirit. Not what is there, but what an honest hand could choose not to record.