The Naturalist's Cabinet — A Tour of the 98types Anatomical Archive

There is something deeply compelling about a wall covered not with decoration, but with evidence. Pinned specimens, labelled diagrams, pressed botanical fragments, field notes in careful handwriting. The naturalist's cabinet — that obsessive, ordered accumulation of the studied world — is one of the great recurring images of intellectual life. And it is having a moment.

Dark academia — the interior aesthetic rooted in old libraries, candlelit studies and the visual language of 19th-century scholarship — has made the naturalist's cabinet the most searched wall art concept in the UK in 2026. What people are looking for, specifically, is vintage anatomical prints, zoological plates and botanical archives: art that looks as if it was made for a purpose beyond decoration.

The 98types Anatomical Archive was made exactly for this.

What Is the Anatomical Archive?

The Anatomical Archive is a collection of 30 original prints created in the tradition of the great natural history archives of the 18th and 19th centuries. Not reproductions of public domain images — original designs, produced at Camden Market, London NW1, on 260gsm museum-grade archival matte paper.

Each plate follows the discipline of the Victorian naturalist: a Latin or scientific title, the subject rendered with accuracy and care, botanical specimens chosen for their relationship to the subject scattered as companions, herbarium-style field notes and annotations, and the warm ivory palette of aged archive paper.

The collection divides into three groups. The anatomical plates study the human body — heart, brain, lungs, hand, skeleton, DNA and more. The zoological plates document thirteen animals — giraffe, lion, bat, dinosaur, seahorse, horse, frog, turtle and others — each with botanical companions drawn from their habitat. And the architectural plates render eight world landmarks — Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the Colosseum, the Pyramids — as though a Victorian naturalist had catalogued them alongside the plants of their environments.

From £3. Buy 3 get 1 free. Printed in England.

The Anatomy Plates — The Body as a Natural History Specimen

The anatomical plates are the heart of the collection in both senses. They treat the human body with the same disciplined curiosity that 19th-century naturalists applied to exotic specimens — not medically, but scientifically, aesthetically, and with genuine wonder at the complexity of what exists inside every person walking down the street.

Plate 28 — Cor Humanum (The Heart) is the most immediately striking of the anatomy plates. Four chambers, four valves, the continuous rhythm of approximately 100,000 beats in a single day — documented alongside Rosa gallica, Hawthorn, Corn Poppy, Peony and Foxglove. The herbarium note reads: rhythm, pressure and flow are maintained continuously throughout life. It is one of those prints that rewards long looking. Hung above a desk or in a home library, it is the kind of thing people ask about.

Plate 30 — Cerebrum Humanum (The Brain) takes on the more complex challenge of rendering thought, language, memory and perception as a natural history specimen. Approximately 86 billion neurons, four major lobes, the full architecture of human consciousness — surrounded by Rosemary, English Lavender, Bearded Iris, Forget-me-not and Opium Poppy. The archive note: the organ of memory, perception, language and thought, preserved here as a botanical specimen of the human form.

Plate 09 — DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) is the most contemporary plate in the anatomical group — the double helix, two strands, four bases, approximately 3 billion base pairs — treated with the same herbarium methodology as a 19th-century plant specimen. Passionflower, Love-in-a-Mist, Fritillaria. The artist's note: a hidden language written inside living cells.

The anatomy plates are consistently chosen as gifts for doctors, nurses and medical students — but their real audience is anyone who finds the body genuinely interesting. They work in studies, home offices, libraries, bedrooms and any room that is trying to say something about who lives there.

The Zoological Plates — Thirteen Animals, Thirteen Habitats

The zoological plates apply the same herbarium methodology to the animal kingdom. Each animal is given botanical companions drawn from its habitat, geography or symbolic associations — making these not just animal prints but complete natural history specimens in the Victorian tradition.

Plate 19 — Chiroptera (The Bat) is the darkest and most atmospheric plate in the collection. The only mammals capable of true sustained flight — wings stretched across elongated finger bones, navigating by echolocation — surrounded entirely by night-blooming plants: Moonflower, Night-blooming Jasmine, Angel's Trumpet and Foxglove. The nocturnal note: the garden changes after sunset; the bat becomes a creature of the night air. For a dark academia interior, this is the zoological print that belongs on the wall.

Plate 08 — Dinosauria approaches deep time with the same archival seriousness. Fossil anatomy — skull, vertebrae, ribs, femur — surrounded by plant lineages that coexisted with dinosaurs: Ginkgo biloba, Cycas revoluta (Sago Palm), Araucaria araucana (Monkey Puzzle Tree) and Field Horsetail, a plant genus with relatives in the fossil record stretching back 350 million years. The paleontological note: fossils turn vanished landscapes into evidence. Birds are the surviving branch of the dinosaur lineage.

Plate 13 — Giraffa is a study in anatomical extremity — the tallest living land animal, seven cervical vertebrae (the same number as a mouse), a large heart that pumps blood the equivalent of a four-storey building's height. Botanical companions from the African savanna: Acacia senegal, Hibiscus rosa-sinensis, Bird of Paradise and Cape Aloe. The field note: the canopy becomes a feeding ground when the neck reaches where others cannot.

Plate 03 — Hippocampus (The Seahorse) documents one of the natural world's most extraordinary reproductive adaptations — the male brood pouch in which developing embryos are carried — surrounded by aquatic botanical companions: Eelgrass, Neptune Grass, White Water Lily and Water Forget-me-not. The specimen note: a miniature horse moving through a garden beneath the sea.

How to Style the Anatomical Archive in a UK Interior

The prints are designed to be accumulated — to look, on a wall, like a collection that has been thoughtfully gathered rather than a set that was bought together. This is the dark academia principle: reference over polish, accumulation over curation, the impression of genuine intellectual interest.

The anatomy gallery wall: four anatomical plates — skull, heart, lungs and hand — in matching thin black frames, hung close together and slightly asymmetrically above a desk. With the buy 3 get 1 free offer, all four from £9.

The curiosities cabinet: anatomical and zoological plates mixed — the brain alongside the bat alongside the seahorse alongside the giraffe — in A4 or A3, creating the atmosphere of a Victorian naturalist's study wall. No two prints need to share a subject; the consistent visual grammar of the collection holds them together.

The single statement piece: the A3 size (30×40cm) makes a significant statement on its own. Above a desk, the Brain plate. Beside a bookshelf, the Skeletal System. In a bedroom, the Heart. Each one earns a conversation.

The gift collection: three or four prints chosen to match the recipient's interests — the DNA and Brain for a scientist, the Lion and Giraffe for a wildlife enthusiast, the Bat and Dinosaur for a dark academia bedroom. With buy 3 get 1 free, from £9 for four prints.

Print Quality — Why the Paper Matters for These Prints

The Anatomical Archive plates contain small-scale detail that most prints would lose: fine-line annotations, scattered botanical names in italic text, delicate hatching in the subject illustration, herbarium notes in compressed type. This kind of detail requires print quality that most online shops don't offer.

Every plate in the collection is produced on 260gsm museum-grade archival matte paper — the paper weight used in UK galleries — using pigment-based inks that resist fading for decades. The surface has the texture and substance of a real art print, not a photo reproduction. Each print arrives flat, ready to frame.

Printed in England, at Camden Market, London NW1. Orders before 3pm dispatch same day, first class.

Browse the full Anatomical Archive collection →

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