{"id":19266,"date":"2026-08-12T07:00:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T07:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/?p=19266"},"modified":"2026-08-11T00:48:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T00:48:33","slug":"butterflies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/2026\/08\/12\/butterflies\/","title":{"rendered":"A View from the Vault: Capturing Nature's Beauty, One Butterfly at a Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Jaime Margalotti, associate librarian and archival metadata librarian<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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To create his remarkable two-volume work <\/span>As Nature Shows Them: Moths and Butterflies of the United States, East of the Rocky Mountains<\/span><\/em> (1900), Sherman Foote Denton employed a less common subset of nature printing\u00a0 known as <\/span>lepidochromy<\/span><\/em>. Rather than relying solely on illustrations, Denton transferred each butterfly or moth directly onto the page, preserving the delicate scales and natural pigments of the specimen. The insect’s body was then added using a copper engraving and carefully hand-colored.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"The<\/p>\n

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Because every specimen was unique, no two copies of the book are exactly alike. Producing the limited edition required more than 50,000 individual insects, making it an extremely ambitious undertaking in\u00a0 natural history publishing. The University of Delaware Library’s Special Collections is home to copy number 8 of the 500 copies produced.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"An<\/p>\n

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\"An<\/p>\n

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\"An<\/p>\n

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Born in 1856, Sherman Foote Denton began his career as an artist with the United States Fish Commission, where he gained recognition for his scientific illustrations and innovations in fish taxidermy. He later founded the Denton Brothers Company with his younger siblings, producing lifelike plaster butterfly mounts using a patented technique that further showcased his passion for blending science, art, and natural history.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cA View from the Vault\u201d showcases some of the unique, notable or rare items that are a part of the Special Collections and Museums holdings at the University of Delaware. Each month, we highlight a different work and share interesting facts or intriguing histories about it. If you are interested in seeing any of the materials featured in person or want to learn more about any work showcased in the series, please contact Special Collections and Museums at <\/span>AskSpec<\/span><\/a> or <\/span>AskMuseums<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Jaime Margalotti, associate librarian and archival metadata librarian   To create his remarkable two-volume work As Nature Shows Them: Moths and Butterflies of the United States, East of the Rocky Mountains (1900), Sherman Foote Denton employed a less common …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":19267,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[17,4,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-museums","category-news","category-special"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 19:31:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19266"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19278,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19266\/revisions\/19278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}