It’s a 54th #womanInSTEM for my last #printerSolstice prompt: variety. Once again I am playing with two concepts of the theme: as design element and scientific term, as in the varieties of #butterfly specimen collected by Victorian lepidopterist, scientific illustrator, traveller and diarist Margaret Fountaine.

#linocut #printmaking #histSTM, #lepidopterist #scientificIllustrator #entomology

In Norwich there’s an unofficial blue historical plaque which reads “Margaret Fountaine 1862-1940 I’m a bloody lepidopterist and I loved love”.

She left 22,000 butterfly specimens and her many diaries to Norwich Castle Museum with instructions that they not be opened till 100 years after they began, which came to 1978, 38 years after her death. They were edited and published as ‘Love among the Butterflies’ and ‘Butterflies and Late Loves.’

While her passionate life and candour might have sold many books, in 1978 the editors focused on her love life and missed how much of a trailblazer she was in entomology, an expert in tropical butterflies life cycles and Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society.
Work in progress on my next portrait: Victorian lepidopterist, scientific illustrator, traveller and diarist Margaret Fountaine (1862-1940).

For #printerSolstice prompt variety.
#linocut #printmaking #womenInSTEM #lepidopterist #entomology #scientist #butterflies
Work on my next portrait: Victorian lepidopterist, scientific illustrator, traveller and diarist Margaret Fountaine (1862-1940), is coming along!

For #printerSolstice prompt variety.
#linocut #printmaking #womenInSTEM #lepidopterist #entomology #scientist #butterflies