Specimens of Hair: The Curious Collection of Peter A. Browne
Language: English
Published by Blast Books, 2018
- Hardcover
- New
Seller: Ria Christie Collections, Uxbridge, United KingdomRia Christie Collections
AbeBooks seller since March 25, 2015
Condition: New
£ 25.50
Quantity: 3 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
In English.
Seller Inventory # ria9780922233496_new
- Title
- Specimens of Hair: The Curious Collection of Peter A. Browne
- Author
- Peck, Robert McCracken
- Publisher
- Blast Books
- Publication year
- 2018
- Condition
- New
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0922233497
- ISBN 13
- 9780922233496
- Item weight
- 692 grams
No matter who we are, old or young, fashion conscious or style indifferent, we are all aware of hair. We wash it; we comb it; we cut, curl, and dye it. Hair can be envied or derided, and hair can provide clues to everything from age to culture to genetic identity to health. To a nineteenth-century amateur naturalist named Peter A. Browne, hair was of paramount importance: he believed it was the single physical attribute that could unravel the mystery of human evolution.
Thirty years before Charles Darwin revolutionized understanding of the descent of man, Browne vigorously collected for study what he called the “pile” (from the Latin word for hair, pilus) of as wide a variety of humans (and animals) as possible in his quest to account for the differences and similarities between groups of humans. The result of his diligent, obsessive work is a fastidious, artfully assembled twelve-volume archive of mammalian diversity.
Browne’s growing quest for knowledge became an all-consuming specimen-collecting passion. By the time of his death in 1860, Browne had assembled samples from innumerable wild and domestic animals, as well as the largest known study collection of human hair. He obtained hair from people from all parts of the globe and all walks of life: artists, scientists, abolitionist ministers, doctors, writers, politicians, financiers, military leaders, and even prisoners, sideshow performers, and lunatics. His crowning achievement was a gathering of hair from thirteen of the first fourteen presidents of the United States. The pages of his albums, some spare, some ornately decorated, many printed ducit amor patriae―led by love of country―are distinctly idiosyncratic, captivating, and powerfully evocative of a vanished world.
Browne’s albums have been sequestered in the archives of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia to which Brown bequeathed them, narrowly escaping destruction in the 1970s. They are a unique manifestation of the avid collecting instinct in nineteenth-century scientific endeavors to explain the mysteries of the natural world.
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About the Author
Rosamond Purcell’s striking photographs of objects from the natural and man-made world have earned her international acclaim. Her collaborations with such diverse intellects as Stephen Jay Gould and Ricky Jay testify to the breadth of her interests: the murky boundary between art and science and the universal human need to collect and classify. Her numerous books include Illuminations, A Glorious Enterprise: The Museum of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and Owls Head: On the Nature of Lost Things.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Ria Christie Collections
Uxbridge, United Kingdom
AbeBooks seller since March 25, 2015
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