Johann Friedrich Naumann (1780–1857) is said to have established the classification of birds as a discipline in Europe. His method was, first, to devote his energies to the taxidermy of birds – on which he published a book – and then to illustrate them. This he did with a touch that was both scientific and artistic. Naumann’s guiding principle was to ‘bring the birds to life’ in as natural a way as possible. He used copper plates, and achieved marvellous results. Unfortunately there aren’t many of these left. Instead, we’ve used for our Memory Game collotypes taken from the 1906 household edition of the ‘Birds of Europe’: these illustrations were made by a variety of artists, who in turn used Naumann’s copper plates as a basis.
We’ve chosen 20 different species, including the house swallow, crested tit, black woodpecker, barn owl, wren, starling and bullfinch, which a firm in Upper Franconia have made into this exquisite Memory Game, exclusive to Manufactum.

On the one hand, educators despair time and again when their charges do not know how to identify the plants in the school garden, the birds on their doorstep or other animals; on the other hand, many adults are not much better off. Memory games that combine curiosity and the joy of playing can help this forgotten knowledge of plant physiognomy, zoological diversity and the conscious examination of it - and should not remain unsuccessful for long, just as the joy of recognizing a plant or an animal in the flesh can be the result of this game. We have developed our memory games in cooperation with a graphic designer especially for this purpose. You can get them only from us. As a template serve historical natural science illustrations.