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What if a seventeenth-century naturalist discovered modern technology?
Inspired by Wenceslaus Hollar's intricate engravings, I began experimenting with the idea of reimagining everyday technology as though it were being documented for a historical scientific archive.
From wireless earbuds and smartphones to virtual reality headsets and smartwatches, we see familiar devices become curious specimens, bringing together two very different periods in time into one image.
The result is The Natural History of Digital Life, a fictional collection created through The Curio Press, a custom Recraft style I developed for this project.
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The Natural History of Digital Habits
I found a hand-coloured illustration from Edward Donovan’s The Natural History of British Insects, Volume VIII (1799), in the Internet Archive Book Images collection on Flickr. I used this archival reference to create my custom Recraft style, Digital Natural History — 1799. My six-image series imagines small creatures using smartphones, wireless earbuds, food delivery, video calls, electric scooters, and robot vacuums. Antique botanical compositions turn modern digital habits into specimens from an impossible natural-history archive.
Kalighat 2026: The Machines Are the New Babus
Kalighat paintings were cheap bazaar watercolours sold in 1880s Calcutta, and they were satire: they mocked the city's new rich, dandies who aped their British masters and lounged while servants fanned them.
I trained a Recraft V4 Style on five anonymous Kalighat sheets from the Cleveland Museum of Art and Wellcome Collection, keeping the bold single outline, flat colour and empty paper ground.
Then I turned the satire on 2026: the machines are the new babus. Phones smoke hookahs on velvet chairs, robot vacuums ride in palanquins, and humans fan, carry and groom their devices. Same masters, new hardware.
Social post: https://lnkd.in/p/gXJn_FQQ
The Future, as They Imagined It
I used this historical furniture illustration because I loved how people and animals became the furniture itself, supporting tables or shaping entire pieces. I paired it with this image, whose visual style caught my eye. Both references come from the Wellcome Collection. That made me wonder: what would furniture look like if the designers of that time had known about laptops, headphones, drones and the other gadgets we use today? I explored that question through a custom Recraft Style and a collection of eight furniture designs, each presented with a graphite sketch.
FOLD · Writing desk
A folding laptop becomes a writing desk. Its opening movement translates into folded supports and a curved privacy panel, finished in forest green, brick red and ochre.
LOOP · Lounge chair
Over-ear headphones become a lounge chair, with circular cushioned armrests and a curved frame wrapping around the seat. Brick-red upholstery and an ochre cushion sit inside a forest-green structure.
KEY · Sideboard
Keyboard keys become six sculpted drawer fronts, arranged in two rows. Their concave surfaces and rounded edges carry over into a cobalt-blue cabinet with blush-pink and cream drawers.
FOCUS · Floor lamp
A webcam becomes an adjustable reading lamp. Its capsule-shaped head and circular lens turn into a pivoting light, combining lavender, petrol green and butter yellow.
PLAY · Sofa
A game controller becomes a two-seat sofa. Rounded grips shape the armrests, while thumbsticks inspire the circular back cushions, in burnt orange, petrol blue and blush pink.
TRACE · Bookcase
A circuit board becomes a storage system. Its pathways translate into shelves and dividers, with enclosed compartments recalling electronic components, in sage green, burgundy and pale yellow.
HOVER · Coffee table
A drone becomes a coffee table. Four branching arms support circular surfaces at different heights, combining powder blue, coral and cream.
SOUND · Bedside cabinet
A portable speaker becomes a bedside cabinet. Its circular driver becomes a drawer, while its carrying loop becomes a sculptural frame, finished in plum, peach and mint green.
The final room illustration brings all eight pieces together, showing how this imagined collection could live in a contemporary home.
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