Featured on PDR in the collection Album of Seaweed Pictures (1848)

The art of arranging marine algae into designs, bouquets, and even sometimes intricate little scenes, was surprisingly popular in the nineteenth century. The particularly fine examples featured here, using doilies as frames, are from an album presented to Augustus Graham, a member of the first board of directors of the Brooklyn Apprentice's Library, later to become the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences and the Brooklyn Museum. Graham also served as the first president of the Institute of Arts and Sciences between 1840-1851 and the album was given to him as a thank you in recognition of his work. Made by a woman named Eliza A. Jordson, it contains – apart from the specimens of seaweed – an essay on the method of transferring the…