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Stories

  • Article

Succumbing to stimming in dance

As a child, Susanna Dye felt ashamed of their need to stim, but has found a way to incorporate these repetitive movements into their creative practice as a dancer and facilitator.

  • Article

Illuminated manuscripts, illuminating medicines

From rare bugs to exorbitantly priced plant parts, find out more about the artistic and medical uses of pigments from the past.

  • Book extract

The shape of thought

Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s description of the moment in 1887 when he saw a brain cell for the first time never fails to move neuroscientist Richard Wingate to tears. Here he captures that enduring sense of wonder.

  • Photo story

‘My Hair Is Not…’

Eight Black people talk about their relationship with their hair – their hairstyle history, their experiences, and how they decided to have natural hair.

All stories (10)

Images

  • The use of analine dyes in microscopy, Paul Ehrlich
  • Dyeing: dyers' and fullers' mills for extracting plant dyes. Coloured engraving by J. Pass.
  • A skeleton gentleman at a ball asks a skeleton lady to dance; representing the effect of arsenical dyes and pigments in clothing and accessories. Wood engraving, 1862.
  • Two men preparing dye for fabric. Watercolour by an Indian painter.
  • Opuntia humifusa Raf. Cactaceae Eastern prickly pear, Indian fig. Distribution: Eastern North America. Stearns (1801) reports 'OPUNTIA a species of cactus. The fruit is called the prickly pear. If eaten it turns the urine and milk in women's breast red'. This is likely to be Opuntia robusta. The ripe fruits are reported edible, raw, and the leaf pads also, either raw or cooked. The fine spines, glochids, cause severe skin irritation so should be wiped off or burnt off prior to cooking and eating. Moerman (1998) reports that O. hemifusa was widely used by Native American tribes for wounds, burns, snakebite, warts (fruit), and as a mordant for dyes used on leather. Widely used, with the spines removed, as a famine food, and dried for winter use. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Opuntia humifusa Raf. Cactaceae Eastern prickly pear, Indian fig. Distribution: Eastern North America. Stearns (1801) reports 'OPUNTIA a species of cactus. The fruit is called the prickly pear. If eaten it turns the urine and milk in women's breast red'. This is likely to be Opuntia robusta. The ripe fruits are reported edible, raw, and the leaf pads also, either raw or cooked. The fine spines, glochids, cause severe skin irritation so should be wiped off or burnt off prior to cooking and eating. Moerman (1998) reports that O. hemifusa was widely used by Native American tribes for wounds, burns, snakebite, warts (fruit), and as a mordant for dyes used on leather. Widely used, with the spines removed, as a famine food, and dried for winter use. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Textiles: tapestry dyeing, three workmen in a textile dyeing workshop (top), a basket and bucket (below). Engraving by R. Benard after Radel.
  • Two Indian men: (left) seated, cutting green produce to shape, and (right) carrying a red bag and two bottles of fluid (ink? dye?). Gouache painting by an Indian artist.
  • Men dyeing cotton blue and red. Coloured lithograph after J.R. Barfoot.
  • A man is dipping cloth into a large dyeing vat. Coloured lithograph.
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Catalogue

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