| Henry Fox Talbot [Attributed to] Shark egg casing (North Atlantic cat or dog shark) n.d. Paper Negative - Contact 18.6 x 11.5 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art 2005.100.800, Schaaf no. 4590 LL/82210 Curatorial description
'This sheet was mounted with five other photogenic drawings of flowers, leaves, and keys on one page of an album of prints, drawings, and photographs assembled by Henry Bright (1784–1869), a merchant from a prominent Bristol family and former member of the British Parliament. It records the form of an egg case from the Scyliorhinidae family of sharks, native to the North Atlantic. Because the marine specimen did not lie flat against the photosensitized paper as a pressed leaf or flower would, the light passed over and around portions of its long tendrils, giving the illusion of the egg case still floating amid the vegetation of the sea bed'
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