Designed by Luke Powell, Jody Hudson-Powell and team, Pentagram Paper 52: The Hudson Transparencies is a publication that brings together all 58 of their Victorian naturalist Great, Great Grandfather, Charles Thomas Hudson’s transparencies for the first time in print.

Charles Hudson was born in London in 1828, and worked primarily in education, first as a teacher, then headmaster. In Victorian Britain, the growing enthusiasm for microscopy (the study of objects that are too small to be seen by the naked eye) was driven by advances in optical technology that opened up entirely new areas of scientific research and discovery. As President of the Royal Microscopical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society, Hudson was a leading figure in this growing scientific community. 

Hudson was renowned for both his pioneering research and his ability to communicate the wonders of the microscopic world to wider audiences. Created to accompany his educational talks, these unique handcrafted artefacts became known as The Hudson Transparencies. The complete set of fifty-eight images of these microscopic plants and animals were acquired in the 1930s and are now part of the University of Exeter’s Special Collections, where they are preserved as rare examples of early scientific visual culture.

Initially brought to their attention by their mother Annie Hudson, Luke and Jody hadn’t thought of publishing or exhibiting Charles Thomas Hudson’s work beyond a short post on social media back in 2020. The response received from friends and contemporaries encouraged them to explore his work more deeply, drawing the conclusion that the work was not only of interest both artistically (in its draftsmanship) and mechanically (in its construction), but that the transparencies’ unique position between creativity and rigour, fact and fiction, performance and presentation was in itself a space which feels as relevant now to contemporary art and design practice as ever, and warranted the gathering and presentation of his work to a wider audience.

The Pentagram Paper provided an opportunity to present both how the transparencies were constructed and how they were intended to appear to audiences of the time when lit from behind. Inspired by the transparencies themselves, Hudson's sketchbooks and the numerous publications about his findings—from print processes, paper stocks, typography and layout, the publication acts as both an archive for and a reinterpretation of the works. 

Hudson’s definitive nineteenth-century two-volume monograph on microscopic creatures, ‘The Rotifera, or Wheel Animalcules’ informed the typographic approach. Unusually, two serif typefaces, Pantasia by Counterforms and Sharp Serif Text by Sharp Type, are used side by side. The typography features idiosyncrasies such as irregular spacing, and double spacing after full stops, drawing on distinctive details from Hudson’s original publication. Rather than directly replicating its historical source, the treatment analyses and reinterprets its character, creating a visual language that feels rooted in the past but still very much a piece of contemporary work. 

While no text appears on the front cover, the first spread includes a title page that references the title page of Hudson’s book, a treatment which also carried through to the introductory text on the corresponding exhibition title wall. For the back cover, a new set of decorative ‘CTH’ letterforms was drawn, inspired by those found on Hudson’s 1886 book The Original Drawings of the Rotifer. 

Throughout the publication, each creature or plant first appears as a full, illuminated photo, followed by its silhouette on the reverse, with the subsequent page showing photos of both the unlit front and reverse side, highlighting each transparency’s intricate construction. 

Printed on IBO One, the white, semi translucent, 60gsm stock gives the publication a wonderfully tactile feel. This is further enhanced by the black UV which for the full, illuminated images, is printed on both sides of the paper, blocking light from passing through the otherwise transparent paper, and mirroring the effect of the original transparencies. Extensive testing took place to find an ink density that would allow just the right amount of light to pass through the page. Careful attention was given to the alignment and subsequent showthrough, and how these would affect the next page. The double sided offset printing also creates fascinating abstracted forms on the reverse of the pages that create another parallel to Hudson‘s original works. 

The book is unbound, creating a portfolio feel and encouraging the reader to hold pages up to the light, or even use them as posters. Paired with a bespoke, glassine envelope which further reinforces the collectable quality of the limited edition Pentagram Paper. 

The publication also features two long form supporting essays by Dr Robin Wootton (Charles Thomas Hudson: Microscopy and Rotifers in Victorian England) and Filipa Ramos (A World of Wonders: On Thomas Hudson’s Transparencies). The first, written by zoologist, entomologist and biomechanicist Dr Wootton, takes a more academic approach combining biology and history, whilst the second looks at the subject from a broader, more societal viewpoint, from a writer whose work focuses primarily on ecology and the fostering of relationships between nature and technology. The combination of the two perspectives serves to emphasize the balance of science and art in Hudson’s work. 

Throughout the process of making both the Pentagram Paper and the exhibition, Luke and Jody saw many parallels between their Great, Great Grandfather's approach and that of their own. Luke explains: “Our practice has always existed at an intersection between function and aesthetics. Never beauty for beauty's sake – nor function to the point of being disengaging, and always looking for a balance in which each supports and enhances the other. Our great-great-grandfather’s images of Rotifer sit on a similar intersection, between something magical, to be in awe of – and something more tangible and immediately understood.”

Part scientific document, part visual performance, Charles Thomas Hudson’s transparencies were created to reveal a world that few people had ever seen. Pentagram Paper 52 brings together all 58 of the transparencies for the first time in a single publication, creating a complete catalogue of the works. It serves both as an archival record and a contemporary reinterpretation of Hudson’s work, revealing the ingenuity, craftsmanship and visual sophistication of these extraordinary objects. 

Read about the exhibition the publication inspired here.