The Re-Creation of the En Tibi Herbarium
- Dyrfinna
- Apr 14
- 2 min read
This is my recreation of the 16th Century En Tibi Herbarium. The original held over 400 preserved plant specimens and was created as a royal gift, possibly to Rudolph the II. The book was bound in goat leather colored with carmine and decorated with gold text and designs. The book bindings were olive and green silk. It would have been very expensive to create. It was, in fact, quite expensive to re-create even now. The paper, for example, is currently still used as botany paper. It is limited in supply, and quite expensive.
My recreation used as much of the same materials as possible. The book is rag linen paper bound in goat leather, with 14k gold leather paint. Modern stain was used instead or carmine. I used hide glue to mount *most* of my specimens, but changed later to a modern glue.
My version will hold approximately 200 specimens, about half of the original piece. One reason for this is the expense of the materials needed. The second is to account for the fact that many of the plant specimens in the original may be extinct, endangered, unavailable, poisonous etc. 200 pages will still give me plenty of pages to hunt and collect plants for a very, very long time.
I started collecting seeds, growing plants and foraging well over a year prior to the creation of the book, keeping notes on the growth, successes and failures of different plants. The piece was shown for the first time as Pentathlon 2025, an arts and science event in the kingdom of Caid, within the SCA. I am so so pleased with how this turned out especially since I have never bound a book or done any leatherworking before! The fact that it came out actually book shaped at all made me very happy. I am looking forward to continuing to add specimens in the years to come.
To read my documentation, complete with all the academic sources and references, and to see the recreation in more detail, please go to the link below.
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