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Love and Longing in the Seaweed Album — The Public Domain Review

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Combing across 19th-century shores, seaweed collectors would wander for hours, tucking specimens into pouches and jars, before pasting their finds into artful albums. Sasha Archibald explores the eros contained in the pressed and illustrated pages of notable algologists, including “the most ambitious album of all” by Charles F. Durant.

Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Seaweed from Charles F. Durant’s Algae and Corallines of the Bay & Harbor of New York (1850). Clockwise from top: Ulva linza, Sargassum montagnei, and Polysiphonia nigrescens — Source. I love the sea as my soul. Often, it even seems to me that the sea really is my soul.1—Heinrich Heine, 1826 The soul of a man is of the same texture as the [seaweed] polypus.2—George Eliot, 1856 Seaweed’s appeal may not be immediately obvious. It comes to beauty by way of strangeness. The texture is uncouth and the shapes irregular; the…

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