Specimen No. 7. Golden Skimmer

$48.00

Specimen No. 7

Name: Golden Skimmer  |  Orphelia lucens minor

Collected by: Rev. Thaddeus Brim, parish librarian, field taxonomist, and amateur botanist

Date of Discovery: 30 July 1869

Locality: Lower fringe of the East Fork, near Clatworthy Mill, Somerset, England

Catalog No. FD - 18 - 07


The first and only known recording of Orphelia lucens minor—colloquially known as the Golden Skimmer—occurred on 30 July 1869, during the height of a parching summer in Somerset. Reverend Thaddeus Brim, a cleric of the minor order and a devoted naturalist of the quiet sort, had taken to solitary excursions during the hour between Evensong and dusk. He followed the riverbed below Clatworthy Mill, where the East Fork had thinned to a trickle, the banks baked to shale and the grasses bowed in submission to heat.

It was there, on a rusted iron post that once tethered a waterwheel gate, that he encountered the insect: upright, absolutely still, its wings outstretched and gleaming as though gilt-leaf had been spun through their veins. At first, he mistook it for a thread of gold caught in cobweb, but it shifted slightly—its thorax catching light like polished brass. He did not sketch it. He did not move. The dragonfly remained in place for five minutes, exactly, according to his field timepiece. And then, with no preparatory flutter or lurch, it vanished—rising, he wrote, “as if dissolved into light.”

He found it again the next morning, scorched lightly along the right hindwing, lying among flattened milkweed and thistle, beneath the same post.

Reverend Brim, known for his delicate hand and frugal methods, carefully preserved the specimen between the flyleaves of an unused hymnal, layered with fine muslin and an envelope of dried mint from the rectory garden. The field note accompanying the sample—now in the fictional possession of Fly Design’s entonology archive—reads simply:

“One wing slightly scorched. Otherwise—perfect.”


Note: High quality archival glicée print on acid-free paper, a method that creates fine art reproductions with exceptional color accuracy and longevity. Pigments-based inks are designed to resist fading and discoloration and capture the finest details and subtle color variations with great precision.  

Housed in a 4×6” crystal-clear acrylic specimen block, its 1” depth allows freestanding display. Each piece is designed to exhibit on desk or shelf. 

Fly Design uses a practice known as entonology — the study of fictitious insects — to reimagine the natural world through scientific storytelling and poetic design.


Specimen No. 7

Name: Golden Skimmer  |  Orphelia lucens minor

Collected by: Rev. Thaddeus Brim, parish librarian, field taxonomist, and amateur botanist

Date of Discovery: 30 July 1869

Locality: Lower fringe of the East Fork, near Clatworthy Mill, Somerset, England

Catalog No. FD - 18 - 07


The first and only known recording of Orphelia lucens minor—colloquially known as the Golden Skimmer—occurred on 30 July 1869, during the height of a parching summer in Somerset. Reverend Thaddeus Brim, a cleric of the minor order and a devoted naturalist of the quiet sort, had taken to solitary excursions during the hour between Evensong and dusk. He followed the riverbed below Clatworthy Mill, where the East Fork had thinned to a trickle, the banks baked to shale and the grasses bowed in submission to heat.

It was there, on a rusted iron post that once tethered a waterwheel gate, that he encountered the insect: upright, absolutely still, its wings outstretched and gleaming as though gilt-leaf had been spun through their veins. At first, he mistook it for a thread of gold caught in cobweb, but it shifted slightly—its thorax catching light like polished brass. He did not sketch it. He did not move. The dragonfly remained in place for five minutes, exactly, according to his field timepiece. And then, with no preparatory flutter or lurch, it vanished—rising, he wrote, “as if dissolved into light.”

He found it again the next morning, scorched lightly along the right hindwing, lying among flattened milkweed and thistle, beneath the same post.

Reverend Brim, known for his delicate hand and frugal methods, carefully preserved the specimen between the flyleaves of an unused hymnal, layered with fine muslin and an envelope of dried mint from the rectory garden. The field note accompanying the sample—now in the fictional possession of Fly Design’s entonology archive—reads simply:

“One wing slightly scorched. Otherwise—perfect.”


Note: High quality archival glicée print on acid-free paper, a method that creates fine art reproductions with exceptional color accuracy and longevity. Pigments-based inks are designed to resist fading and discoloration and capture the finest details and subtle color variations with great precision.  

Housed in a 4×6” crystal-clear acrylic specimen block, its 1” depth allows freestanding display. Each piece is designed to exhibit on desk or shelf. 

Fly Design uses a practice known as entonology — the study of fictitious insects — to reimagine the natural world through scientific storytelling and poetic design.