Clio & Ernst

Clio is the Muse of History. She is a reader of books, a seeker of patterns. Clio gets frustrated by the notion that history is confined to human affairs. She loves natural history and geology. Rocks tell so many stories. They are rarely in a hurry, and so a perfect vehicle for studying the past, as well as how we think about time.

I scribed this piece of slate with my own version of a Forkskalia tholoides, a marine invertebrate first described by Ernst Haeckel in 1888, from his book Report on the Siphonophorae. His artwork is amongst some of the most beautiful and faithful renderings ever drawn of the natural world. It’s a perfect blend of art and science and absolutely memerizing. Slate used to be used for black boards in classrooms, which seems apt here; geology and human history intersecting with natural history. I have the small version of a collection of Haeckel’s work published by Taschen. There’s also a huge version, linked above. The book weighs 16 pounds!