Folio the First · MDCCCLXX

Curiosities, faithfully recorded in pen & ink.

Original engravings after the field notebooks of a Victorian naturalist — moths, ferns, cephalopods, and star charts, printed on archival cotton papers or pressed upon honest cloth.

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Read the Archive Story

“every specimen drawn from life, or as near to it as prudence allowed”

Explore the Archive

Follow the recovered notebooks from field observation to finished plate. The first coordinated specimen collection is currently being prepared.

The Collection

Specimen Plates

Museum-inspired wall art and apparel developed from the Blackwood notebook archive and printed to order.

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The Record

Field Journal

Original notebook drawings, complete discovery accounts, and present-day curator’s notes from Tobias Blackwood.

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The Provenance

The Blackwood Archive

Meet E. A. Blackwood, the S.V. Nightjar, and the descendant now cataloguing forty-one recovered field notebooks.

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Now in the Study

Specimen No. 013 — The Mandrake

The first notebook page, wall-art plate, and apparel edition are being prepared as one linked collection. Nothing will be released until the artwork, production details, and Field Journal provenance have been verified together.

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Read the Archive Story

The Naturalist’s Story

In the winter of 1870, a certain E. A. Blackwood returned from eleven years abroad with forty-one notebooks and a reputation for drawing things exactly as they are — and occasionally as they ought not to be. This press exists to put his plates on your walls.

Read the Expedition Preface

From the Field Journal

the archive opens

From Tobias Blackwood

Opening the Blackwood Field Journal

Why forty-one recovered notebooks are being catalogued here, and why each specimen will remain in the study until its story and companion editions are ready together.

Read the first entry →