Saturday, September 09, 2006

Bric-à-Brac

Willard and Idaho pears from sometime around 1900

Willard and Idaho pears from sometime around 1900. From the U.S.
Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection, housed at the
National Agricultural Library. "During the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
the USDA employed artists to document newly introduced fruit cultivars."

Spirit of the Vale of Neath
'Spirit of the Vale of Neath' by Thomas Hornor, early 19th century

chess players drawing
'Chess Players', drawing by Merlyn Oliver Evans (before 1973)

These 2 images come from the outstanding and exemplary
'Gathering the Jewels' image database in Wales:
"Over 20,000 images of objects, books, letters, aerial photographs
and other items from museums, libraries and record offices in Wales."
Browse thematically, geographically or by simple and metadata
searching. Click everywhere. One of the themes I found engrossing
was the Victorian 'mug-shot' albums from Denbighshire
[click on an image to see a transcript and then again to see an enlarged photo]
This site could should be a model for any image repository.

world war i silhouettes
'Soldier Silhouettes on our Front', 1918 by William L Stidger with
illustration work by Jessie Gillespie, online at Project Gutenburg.

dissected human head
japanese monsters a
3 birds
japanese monsters b
japanese monsters b
These images, crazy and exquisite by turns, come from the
Iwase Bunko Library in Japan
. Regrettably many of the images are
poorly digitized - there is, as I've come to happily expect from Japanese
rare book material, some bizarre and eclectic material, which sometimes
benefits from 'right-click', 'view-image'. I've reduced the size and sharpened
the above examples. The link comes via Pink Tentacle. They have an
excellent post regarding an early 19th century UFO from the Library.


peter rabbit magician
'Peter Rabbit the Magician' 1942 by Mel Richards at Glyph Jockey.


2 grandville drawings
I could post JJ Grandville illustrations every day.
These 2 are from 'L'Exposition de l'Avenir' 1868 at the
wonderful Coconino World. [previous Grandville]


darlinghurst jail sydney
'Darlinghurst Jail' (inner Sydney). This 1891 watercolour sketch
by HL Bertrand is a composite of about 6 splices from screencaps.
It's among the Law and Justice section of the Australian History
collections at the Mitchell (State) Library of NSW
.


plantae selectae
Harald Fischer Verlag have a dozen plates from the
1790-92 book 'Plantae Selectae' by Jacob Trew.


equipo cronica serigraph
equipo cronica serigraph a
equipo cronica serigraph b
In 1964, 6 artists formed 'Equipo Crónica' - considered the leading
practitioners of pop art in Spain. An exhibition of these works from
Institut Valencià d'Art Modern has been touring South America and
is currently on display in Mexico. The serigraphs - screenprints -
above come from the exhibition catalogues, available as 5 pdf files
[click 'Catálogo on-line']. A little background in english.
The Equipo Crónica site has some photos of the artists.


cell biology film images
These are screen captures from a Harvard Biological school collaborative
project film: 'The Inner Life of a Cell'. It only goes for a few minutes
but I love the inner space/alien world of cell biology.
Alexander Trevi at Pruned finds all the great stuff.

Other things..

-- Ampersand Duck has a couple of great posts describing with text and photographs the art of repairing a book. [via]
-- My Father's Hands
-- 'The Naming of Names - the Search for Order in the World of Plants' by Anna Pavlord. This commercial site gives a run down with excerpts and a few small images from a book about the history of plant names. Looks fascinating. [this is not an advert.]

5 comments :

misteraitch said...

I bought The Naming of Names but haven’t read it all yet: it is a beautifully illustrated book.

peacay said...

Well I sure hope that means you'll be doing some scanning and treating us all with a post.

Aeron said...

Those Yokai looking paintings are great, it's too bad the site has them posted at such small sizes. I'm always frustrated when I find artwork I like and it is posted at a size that is impossible to even see the work at.

Have you had much luck in finding work dedicated to the grotesque in art? I'm thinking about doing a large post about the style but am still sifting through the net for enough material to back up a solid post about it. I know Giornale Nuovo has a lot of great scans of that art style.

peacay said...

Aeron, I didn't mind the size of those images as much as I thought the quality was so poor (oh, of course I much prefer LARGE). I would not be hiring that person to scan/photograph and host anything of mine.

A long time ago I remember trying to search around for the grotesqueries but ended up deciding that the lazier way -- post them when I stumble across them -- was the easier path.

But yes, Giornale Nuovo is the most grotesque site on the web. I seem to end up there every other day, one way or another (thankfully).

J M said...

Equipo Crónica was a couple of painters who created a vast collection of pop-inspired paintings (including a version of the Velázquez Meninas in a modern house setting). Their work has a sharp critical edge and is very enjoyable, but at the same time demands some insight and criticism on the part of the viewer.
The Equipo Cronica were one of the highlights of spanish art in the dark ages of Francisco Franco dictatorship.

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