Remainders

Spray Paint

Cello Players

Bud Waldo

All etchings above (posted here with permission) © Bruce Waldman,
a lecturer at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) papercut motif produced in the 1980s by Maurilio Rojas from San Salvador Huixcolotla in Mexico. The image comes from the British Museum and the chisel/paper technique is referred to as Papel Picado.

"A skeleton; half-length; set in an oval frame with hourglasses and skulls and bones"

"The Damned; three bust-length male figures surrounded by
flames; set in an oval frame with bats, devils and seven-headed beasts"

From a series of six engravings of memento mori* by the German artist Alexander Mair, 1605. (these are definitely the best of the series) [British Museum]

Frontispiece featuring muses (?) from
'Astronomisches Handbuch' by Johann Rost*, 1718 from HAB.

This is a cover from 'Carebna Babushucka' 'Carevna Lyagushka' (Queen-Frog, Fairy Tales) by Bilibiu (illustrated by HA Ghangnai) Ivan Bilibin, 1901 (the above image came from one of the catalogues at PBA Galleries) [see comments at the end of this post]





Frontispiece from 'Cynographia Curiosa Seu Canis Descriptio' by Christian Franz Paullini - 1685 (HAB), a zoological treatise as the reliable Philological Museum advises (a great resource for finding online neo-latin texts).

Solomon's Temple from a 1660 version of the King James Bible
(published by John Field) (from PBA Galleries)

Gaspar Schott (previously) was an assistant to Athanasius Kircher. All of his works are fairly eccentric and most are derivatives or additives to Kircher's own large and eccentric body of work. The above two images were the more interesting examples from his 1667 book, 'Ioco-Seriorum Naturae Et Artis, Sive Magiae Naturalis Centuriae Tres', from HAB. The work is said to describe more then three hundred physical, chemical, alchemical and magical experiments and tricks.





'Khamsah of Nizami' - a 19th century copy of a 12th century Persian poem. We are told:

"Persian poetry, written in calligraphy on handmade paper. One of Persia's most famous poets, the twelfth century Nizam-uddin Abu Mahommed Ilyas bin Yusuf lived most of his life in Ganja, in what now is Azerbaijan. Nizami is best remembered for his Khamsah, or Quintet, which also is known as Panj Ganj or Five Treasures. Nizami wrote the five long narrative poems in couplets, using different meters for each. Three of the poems are romances and celebrated as the most important Persian language examples of the genre. This fragment of the Khamsah of Nizami was done in calligraphy in the mid-nineteenth century."

These pages come from the 'Illuminating the Manuscript Leaves' exhibition site at the University of Louisville, Kentucky.














A hunting (and less so, agriculture) book by the Swiss pair, Tobias Stimmer and Christoph Maurer, called: 'Künstliche Wolgerissene Figuren und Abbildunge Etlicher Jagdbahren Thieren' from 1605 (at HAB). There are about forty woodcuts; interesting to me for all the incidental details in the scenes.

"St Michael; the archangel standing on top of a devil,
piercing him with a lance; the demon holds onto a shield"

Samson rending the lion

Prints from between 1475 and 1500 by the Dutch
artist known as Monogrammist FVB [British Museum].

A gannet, "a bird that was of enduring interest to Scots because its association with the Bass Rock gave it its Latin name, given here as Anser Bassensis, and in its modern form, Sula Bassana"

This illustration of a gannet comes from the 1684 publication: 'Scotia Illustrata' by Robert Sibbald. I did a very cursory search around (some weeks ago) and was disappointed only to find a couple of other poor quality animal drawings from this intriguing work. We are told:

"Sir Robert Sibbald (1641-1722) was appointed Geographer Royal to King Charles II. His description of Scotland begins with the peoples, geography and climate of the different regions, followed by an account of diet, diseases and the medicinal uses of Scotland's natural products. He then lists all known flora, fauna and minerals. His plan, outlined in his 1683 'Account of the Scottish Atlas, or the Description of Scotland', was to produce a two-volume work: 'Scotia Antiqua' and 'Scotia Moderna'. In the event, this Atlas was never completed. Only the natural history, 'Scotia Illustrata', was ever published. It is nevertheless a key work in establishing the absolute value of objective, empirical information in all fields."

I found the plate somewhere in the Special Collections, Edinburgh University Library.





My notes say: "Seder Hagadah shel Pesah, Venetsiah - 1609 - Jewish Theological Seminary". Again, I found the various background details in the woodcuts that make up this titlepage intriguing.

Zhong Kui and a demon with a vase of plum blossom

Zhong Kui assaulting a demon with an axe

Zhong Kui drawing his sword, attended by a
demon carrying magic jewels on a tray on his head

These 17th century coloured woodblock prints come from the British Museum. The biography of the mythologoical Chinese figure, Zhong kui:

"God of Literature, vanquisher of demons. Zhong Kui excelled in the metropolitan examinations and was due to receive honours from the emperor. The emperor found Zhong Kui's ugly face repulsive and refused to give him the honours. Zhong Kui threw himself into the sea, but was saved by the ao-monster, which carried him to the surface on its back. Zhong Kui has come to be associated with the Kui-constellation, often regarded as his heavenly palace. His fame came after the Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang dynasty, during an illness, saw Zhong Kui in a dream, where he dispatched two demons tormenting the emperor and Yang Guifei. Upon awaking, the emperor was restored to health."

'Zwey Nachdänckliche Traum-Gesichte' 1684 by Georg Speer, a travel book I believe. It comes from somewhere in the recesses of HAB.

French gothic ornament

Glyph Jockey has uploaded some further scans from
'History of Architecture and Ornament', 1909. LINK. (previously)

These illustrations are presumably © the estate of Homer H Boelter.

In 1969 Boelter published an album of lithographs of Hopi Indians - 'Portfolio of Hopi Kachinas' - limited to one thousand copies. The first illustration above comes from PBA galleries. The paired image and the balance of the sixteen plates in the series - and background - can be found at Native American Links.




Bouquinosphère 3 was some sort of conference. I just liked the sentiment expressed in the picture which was found here a couple of months ago. I don't know if it's derivative and I spent way too much time unsuccessfully trying to work out its origin when I first found it. No, I couldn't find a larger version. Click on the image for larger original version (Australia Post advertisement) [Thanks Sveta!].


Other things...

For those that read via rss and don't visit the site, I've added a feed from my own del.icio.us bookmarks to the sidebar. It naturally gravitates towards the book, illustration, exhibition, library, gallery, manuscript kind of material, plus other bits and pieces. It also tends to be the place I accumulate links that may or may not end up on BibliOdyssey.
Some blogs:

• Cartophilia - a lover of maps.
• Notes for Bibliophiles - "The official blog of the Special Collections department of the Providence Public Library".
• bookn3rd - "Book History and diversions therefrom."
• Grain Edit - "Inspiration from vintage kids + rare graphic design books"
• Publick Occurrences - "blog of historical and political punditry by the inimitable Common-place columnist and former History News Network blogger Jeffrey L. Pasley."
• Library Preservation - Kevin Driedger on rare book conservation/preservation.
• Le territoire des sens - art . architecture . design . nature . science

Mexico and Environs

Mexican antiquities, which exist in the National Museum of Mexico, 1857.

Cathedral of Mexico

Inside the Cathedral of Mexico
(in April 1855 during the celebration of the Immaculate Conception of Mary)

The Cascading Fountain

Morelos Square, formerly Guardiola Square

Principal parish church

Municipal House or Deputation (?)

The village of Ixtacalco

Public Square of Mexico

The town of Guadalupe, taken from a balloon

Mexican costumes

Mexican costumes

Mexican costumes

Frontispieces from the 1869 and 1855 editions

The album of chromolithographs, 'México y sus Alrededores' (Mexico and Environs), is online at NYPL. The principal lithographer/artist for the project was Casimiro Castro, one of Mexico's foremost landscape artists in the nineteenth century. The forty illustrations were originally published in 1855-1856 [available at Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes (click 'leer'), which includes the text]. The version at NYPL was published in 1869.

Speaking of NYPL, check out the newly designed Digital Gallery, announced as a 'soft launch' last week.

Recreational Microscopy

A century after Robert Hooke's extraordinary treatise introduced the microscopic world to an astonished public, the German polymath, physician and keeper of the Margrave of Brandenburg's natural history collection, Martin Frobenius Ledermüller (1719-1769), succeeded in elaborating the potential of this emerging scientific art of popular microscopy.

Ledermüller produced a series of books in the second half of the eighteenth century whose success was directly related to the visual quality of the engravings made from his own drawings. Illustrations of previously invisible material - fungi, plants, insects, plankton and crystals - were a great commercial draw card in their own right of course. But Ledermüller augmented the basic findings he recorded from his microscopic studies with a graphic designer's aesthetic.

Specimens are arranged in the pictures to achieve an overall symmetry or balanced appearance, the details are unnaturally precise and handcolouring enhances the artistic effects. These attractive plates may not win any art show prizes necessarily and the scientific content may not represent ground breaking research per se, but Ledermüller (and similar early microscopists) occupies a nonetheless important place in the history of science. These embellished visual works - still informative and based in fact - served as a means by which the esoteric world of science could be communicated to a fascinated lay audience. If enthusiastic dilettantes failed to successfully visualise similar quality details after dashing out to purchase their own microscope, well, it could only be a matter of practice and modifying their techniques right?


Within the last two days, the formidable Strasbourg Universities Digital Library uploaded a three volume work by Ledermüller. The selection of images above is from the first two volumes (I've only just now discovered that the third is also on line). About a quarter(?) of the available plates from the first two volumes are shown. I think there are one hundred and fifty plates in total in the series. The only adjustments I made were cropping and a slight reduction in size (the large versions posted to flickr are still huge).

'Amusement Microscopique tant pour l'Esprit, que pour les Yeux; Contenant Cinquante Estampes [..] Dessinées d'après Nature et Enluminées, avec leurs Explications' was published between 1766 and 1768 with engravings by Adam Wolfgang Winterschmidt.
[Approximately: 'Recreational Microscopy for the Spirit and the Eyes, Containing Fifty Coloured Drawings from Nature with Explanations' - this is the title from Volume One]

⊕Volume One (note: after clicking 'See digitalized document', click the little folder icon top left to get thumbnail pages)
⊕Volume Two
⊕Volume Three
⊕Previously