Beyond the Botanical with Persian collections at Kew Gardens’ Library and Archives
with Shabnam Balouch & Isabel Lauterjung
This talk explores Persian materials in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, focusing on the unexpected cultural and social histories preserved within a botanical archive. While the exhibition Persia Reimagined: From Herbarium to Heritage (30 September 2025 – 22 January 2026) is rooted in plant expeditions and specimens, it highlights how collectors recorded much more than flora. Their diaries, labels, photographs, and sketches captured the foods they ate, the buildings they stayed in, the landscapes they admired, and the people they encountered. These traces reveal overlooked dimensions of daily life in early 20th-century Iran, preserved—almost incidentally—within a scientific archive.
By drawing attention to these hidden layers, the talk invites a reconsideration of what botanical collections can tell us, beyond science. It also reflects on the process of curating an exhibition from these materials, including the development of outreach activities and community workshops designed to bring Kew’s Persian collections into dialogue with contemporary audiences.
About the speakers:
Shabnam Balouch is a Preventative Conservation Officer at Leighton House Museum, and an independent researcher whose work focuses on Persian cultural heritage in UK collections. With a background spanning conservation, archives, and curatorial practice, her research examines the ways historical collections preserve cultural knowledge beyond their original purpose. She is the co-curator of Persia Reimagined: From Herbarium to Heritage at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which brings to light the overlooked cultural narratives within the Herbarium’s Persian collections. Using plant specimens, diaries, photographs, and field notes from early 20th-century expeditions, her work reveals the unexpected — from everyday encounters and food traditions to architectural sketches and personal reflections — hidden within botanical records. Alongside her curatorial practice, Shabnam develops outreach programmes and community workshops that connect archives with contemporary audiences, encouraging dialogue across cultures, disciplines, and generations.
Isabel Lauterjung is currently Assistant Archivist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and co-curator of the exhibition ‘Persia Reimagined: From Herbarium to Heritage’ (30 Sep 25 – 22 Jan 26). She has previously worked at The Royal Society. She is keen to promote the use of archive collections to as broad an audience as possible through outreach and engagement opportunities: archives are for everyone. Her broader research interest lies in multisensory approaches to heritage collections, in particular the use and occurrence of smell in archives.