There is a long tradition of looking at insects and seeing something more than an insect.
The Egyptians saw the scarab and understood resurrection. The Victorians pinned specimens to velvet and called it science, but the care they took — the arrangement, the labelling, the glass — was something closer to devotion. Entomology, at its heart, has always been about the human need to preserve what is small and fleeting and extraordinary, to hold it still long enough to really look.
Entomological art carries that tradition forward. And in gothic and dark decor, it finds its most honest home.
What Is Entomological Art?
Entomological art is the practice of displaying preserved insects as objects of aesthetic and symbolic value — not merely as scientific specimens, but as art. It draws from the long history of natural history collections, Wunderkammer (cabinets of curiosities), and Victorian specimen display, and reframes them through a contemporary lens.
In its gothic form, entomological art goes further. The insect is not simply pinned and labelled. It is composed — placed within a world of velvet and lace and bone and dried flowers, given a frame worthy of a reliquary, and presented as something that deserves to be looked at slowly, with attention.
The result is a piece that is simultaneously natural history and dark art. Science and ritual. Preservation and beauty.
Why Insects?
Insects have always occupied a strange place in human imagination. They are ancient — far older than we are. They are abundant and largely invisible, living their entire lives at the edges of our attention. And yet, when you look closely, they are extraordinary: the ghost-pale wings of a cicada veined like cathedral glass, the armoured geometry of a centipede, the patient stillness of a mantis.
In gothic aesthetics, insects carry particular resonance. They are associated with transformation — the moth emerging from its cocoon, the cicada surfacing after years underground. They are associated with death — the beetle, the fly, the creatures that return what has died to the earth. And they are associated with the uncanny: the spider at the centre of her web, the mantis that holds perfectly still until it doesn't.
To preserve an insect and place it behind glass is to stop time. To say: look at this. Really look.
The Ghost Cicada: A Study in Translucence
I have worked with many insects over the years, but the Ayuthia spectabile — the Ghost Cicada — remains one of the most quietly astonishing. Its wings are nearly transparent, veined in gold, the kind of pale that makes you think of old lace and winter light. It is named for its ghostly appearance, and the name is exactly right.
In Lacrimosa, I placed a Ghost Cicada on deep navy velvet — the colour of the sky at the moment just before it decides to be night — and crowned it with a hand-made silver lace ornament in the shape of a cross. Dried white flowers gather around it like an offering. The baroque frame was hand-carved and hand-painted to hold all of this with the gravity it deserves.
The cicada sings once. It is enough.
Composition: When More Than One Specimen Shares the Frame
Some of my favourite pieces are the ones that create a world — where multiple specimens share a space and something happens between them.
Memento Vivere is one of those pieces. Inside a hand-carved coffin frame, a real preserved centipede shares the space with a Deilephila elpenor — the elephant hawk-moth, its wings the colour of old rose and warm earth — and a white butterfly, pale as a held breath. Cream lace runs around them like a path through a garden that has gone slightly feral. Dried marigolds press against deep teal-green velvet around the edges.
The title means remember to live. It is harder than it sounds, and more urgent than we usually admit.
This is what entomological art can do that a scientific specimen cannot: it can mean something. It can hold a feeling. It can ask a question.
Duality and Symmetry: The Mantis
The praying mantis has been a symbol of stillness, patience, and predatory precision across cultures for centuries. In Chinese tradition, it represents courage and focus. In many African traditions, it is a messenger from the spirit world. In gothic aesthetics, it is simply itself: a creature of extraordinary geometry, perfectly still until it moves, and then very fast indeed.
Mantis Twin Frames plays with the mantis's natural symmetry — a mirrored pair, suspended in time, bound across the same unseen threshold. Each frame is hand-aged and detailed, with labradorite moons and preserved flowers. Separate, yet connected by something that doesn't need to be named.
Duality is one of the oldest themes in dark art. The mantis, it turns out, understands it instinctively.
Beyond Insects: Arachnids and the Art of the Reliquary
Entomological art, strictly speaking, concerns insects — but in practice, the tradition has always extended to the broader world of small creatures: spiders, scorpions, the things that live in the dark and are rarely looked at directly.
The spider, in particular, has a long history in gothic and occult symbolism. She is the weaver, the keeper of webs, the creature who sits at the centre of her own geometry and waits. In Arachne's Reliquary, a preserved Nephilengys malabarensis sits among dried purple flowers beneath a delicate shrew skull, in an oval frame lined with black velvet. The piece is small — intimate — the kind of thing you lean in to see properly.
And in Ossuary Maswerk, a Nephilia vitiana spider holds the centre of a composition built from real animal bones — mouse skulls, a bird skull, vertebrae, small ribs — arranged with obsessive precision against deep crimson velvet. Around the oval, antique black lace with crosses. A heavy baroque frame in aged black and gold.
This is not decoration. This is a reliquary.
How to Display Entomological Art
Entomological pieces work best when they are given space to be looked at. A single shadowbox on a dark wall, lit by candlelight or a warm directional lamp, will do more than a crowded gallery. These are objects that reward attention — the more closely you look, the more you see.
That said, they also work beautifully in curated groupings: a collection of insect pieces arranged by colour or scale, or mixed with botanical and bone elements for a cabinet-of-curiosities effect. The key is intention. Every piece should be there for a reason.
For altar spaces, insect pieces carry particular symbolic weight — the moth for transformation, the spider for fate and weaving, the cicada for resurrection and the long patience of waiting.
On Preservation
Every insect in my work is a real specimen, preserved with care. I work with specimens that have died naturally or are sourced from specialist suppliers — the same suppliers who provide specimens to natural history museums and scientific collections.
Preservation is, in itself, a form of respect. To take something small and extraordinary and hold it still, to give it a frame and a velvet backing and a place on a wall where it will be looked at — this is not a diminishment. It is an acknowledgement. These creatures lived. They were extraordinary. They deserve to be seen.
Explore the Collection
Each piece in my entomological collection is one of a kind. Once it's gone, it's gone — which is, perhaps, the most honest thing that can be said about anything that was once alive.
Browse the current collection and find the one that asks to be looked at.