Pieter Cramer (1721 - 1776)

Pieter Cramer

Pieter Cramer was a Dutch merchant and traveler and entomologist.

A cloth and wool merchant, Cramer traveled the world and amassed an extensive collection of sea shells, fossils, and various insects. Many colorful butterflies and moths were collected in Surinam, Ceylon, Sierra Leone, and the Dutch East Indies - countries with which Holland had colonial or trade ties. Kramer hired the artist Gerrit Wartenaar Lambertz to sketch butterfly specimens collected not only by him but also by other Dutch collectors. The illustrations were very numerous, and Kramer, together with the naturalist and entomologist Caspar Stoll, decided to publish them.

The resulting encyclopedia, De Uitlandsche Kapellen, is one of the key works in the history of entomology. The scales from Asia, Africa and the Americas are depicted in life-size and hand-colored engravings. It was the first book on exotic butterflies to use the new system of animal classification developed by Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778). Over 1,658 species of butterflies were described and illustrated on 400 plates. Many species were depicted and named for the first time.