John Herron just became more interesting. If you don’t know who he is, you may recognize the name as it relates to the Herron School of Art, or indeed, as a previous name of our institution when it was known as the John Herron Art Institute. The man himself, though, is typically described as a relatively unknown businessman who left the bulk of his fortune to the Art Association of Indianapolis. His bequest of $250,000 is what enabled us to construct the first permanent home for the museum.

Tucked away in the Archives are a few boxes of his family’s books. One of those volumes is Ebenezer Sibly’s A New and Complete Illustration of the Occult Sciences. The book dates to 1792 and appears to have been purchased by Herron’s father in England in 1816, a year before his son’s birth. This seems like a curious item for a farmer-turned-businessman to own, but may have been used instead of a farmer’s almanac. Even more surprising though, was my discovery of about a dozen pressed leaves scattered throughout the book!

Click through the images to see the plant names

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Title page

So many questions arose that I had to share this discovery with our Horticulture team and called upon Jaime Frye, Associate Curator of Living Collections, to lend her expertise. Here’s some of what she had to say:

“The first plants pressed for modern-day, European botanical science are credited to Luca Ghini in the mid-1500's. He began pressing, drying, and mounting specimens into paper books for study outside of the field (ex-situ). At its inception, these herbarium collections were kept in bound volumes, but Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus was frustrated by the permanence of their organization (or lack thereof) and started the trend of leaving sheets unbound and stacked with similar or related plants in large cabinets. This is now the basis of how plants are named and categorized in modern science.

"Did the person who saved these leaves want to do a craft with them? Were they pursuing a new interest in the botanical world around them?

“Pressing plants was also practiced by creatives and utilized as souvenirs, artistic media, or conversation pieces. I may not be able to hop in a time machine and tell you exactly from where or why these little plants found themselves in this aged book on the occult, but I can say with confidence that they are part of a time-honored legacy that has endured professionally and recreationally.

Jaime quickly determined the rose and geranium (Pelargonium sp.) leaves, and she and other staff debated between a red currant versus a viburnum for another leaf. For the fern, she texted a former student intern but couldn’t reach a consensus. Another colleague of Jaime’s helped identify the “horned” leaf, which they said was a wild grape (Vitis raparia) native to much of eastern North America.

Jaime’s conclusion: “Likely, these plants were plucked from someone's garden. There is a mix of North American native and commonly cultivated plants that leads me to believe it.”

Finally, I consulted Doug Sanders, our Conservator of Works on Paper, and he provided advice about how to preserve our discovery: by buffering each leaf within an acid-free paper enclosure, we can keep the leaves inside the book but prevent the possibility of any future damage to the pages.

Love learning, leaves, the Library and more? Join First Thursday presented by Gainbridge for activities on November 5: