The Butterfly Album of Formosa

Description:

An unusual commercially produced butterfly specimen album, containing 134 actual specimens, 132 butterflies and two moths, mounted on both sides of ten stiff card leaves, each side protected by a glassine sheet, the whole contained in a velvet-covered album. The wings are all original specimens; the insect bodies have been replaced by carefully shaped and painted card cut-outs, a method which allowed the specimens to be mounted virtually flat within the album while retaining their most colourful and visually distinctive features.

The specimens, all collected in Formosa (present-day Taiwan), comprise Papilionidae (24), Pieridae (24), Danaidae (11), Satyridae (12), Amathusiidae (2), Nymphalidae (34), Libytheidae (1), Lycaenidae (14) and Hesperiidae (10), together with two moths, including the magnificent Atlas moth, Attacus atlas. Letterpress consists of two leaves only: title-page and list of specimens.

Su describes himself on the title-page simply as “Amateur Collector”, and gives his address as 1/51, Lane 269, Roosevelt Road, Section 3, Taipei. The album was evidently produced for commercial sale: the original price is printed as N.T. $360 / U.S. $9, the inclusion of a price in US dollars strongly suggesting that foreign visitors, expatriates and overseas collectors formed at least part of the intended market.

The album appeared at a particularly interesting moment in Taiwan's natural-history and commercial history. Long celebrated for the richness and diversity of its Lepidoptera, Taiwan developed a substantial butterfly-processing and export industry during the 1960s, supplying specimens and decorative butterfly products to an international market and eventually becoming a world centre of the trade. Su's album, published in 1960, dates from the beginning of this remarkable period.

Unlike the decorative pictures and other butterfly-wing products subsequently manufactured in considerable quantities, this album combines the functions of a representative natural-history collection, identification album and luxury souvenir. Its systematic arrangement by family, named specimens, genuine wings, laborious individual mounting and velvet binding suggest a relatively expensive product intended to showcase the diversity and beauty of the butterflies of Formosa.

A remarkable and uncommon example of mid-twentieth-century Taiwanese natural-history material culture, documenting both the island's celebrated Lepidoptera fauna and the beginnings of the commercial butterfly trade for which Taiwan became internationally renowned.

Condition

Orig. velvet covered binder (270x245mm), gilt title to front board. A few specimens are slightly imperfect, but most are in very good condition.