lost treasure

Last year, my cousin Jill got married at Friendship and we held an after-party for her and Jeff in my parent’s backyard. Henry and I also had a double reception – one at the church and a dinner in my parent’s backyard. Over the four years between the two events, my dad managed to stuff several more “treasures” into my parent’s basement. So early July was spent going through the basement trying to make some sense of all the chaos. On top of that, Henry and I were moving to DC the same weekend and we needed to store about half of our belongings in their basement.

In the midst of all the boxes of papers and books, salvaged political signs, and random yard equipment, I discovered an original 1885 edition of Wood’s Natural History. It was slowly rotting away in a plastic trash can along with several other old books. I removed the books and placed them on an empty bookshelf. I knew that despite all of the decay and missing pages, the illustrations throughout the book were worth saving. I placed it in a plastic CVS bag and brought it with me to DC.

The starfish is one of the more fabulous images from the book. I also used the octopus for a Locco for Gocco training workshop at Paper Source earlier this year. The octopus on the gravel and pool paper made quite a splash! Henry loved it, as did lots of people in the class.