“The parts of the Feathers of this glorious Bird appear, through the Microscope, no less gaudy then do the whole Feathers; for, as to the naked eye ’tis evident that the stem or quill of each Feather in the tail sends out multitudes of Lateral branches, … so each of those threads in the Microscope appears […]

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Discriminating patterns and making connections … This is how Andrew described the work of science as I left the lab after my third day in the University of Sheffield Department of Physics. This is not so very different to the work of art I think – at least on one level … The topic that had […]

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One definition of the word fugitive, from the Oxford English Dictionary, is as follows: quick to disappear; fleeting: the fugitive effects of light. The word is derived from Late Middle English: from Old French fugitif, -ive, from Latin fugitivus, from fugere ‘flee’. This fleeting (fleeing) quality is often attributed to life. In terms of paint, at least in terms of the specialist terminology used […]

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” Visibility from a quarter of a mile away” H Bates 1864 In Morpho butterflies such as Morpho anaxibia brilliant colours are produced by intricate fir tree-shaped microstructures too small for optical microscopes.  

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