Splintered Remainders

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I *think* the top picture shows the crude breathing device made by Sieur Freminet in 1771. Unfortunately it was a closed rebreathing system and he died after 20 minutes under water from a lack of oxygen.
[Later: the origin of that picture is a mystery. It's not Freminet. The citing about Freminet's death pretty well contradicts the description in the french article below, which attests to his diving over a 10 year period using the rebreathing device. Hm. Thanks w o.]

The other 2 images show views of what is considered by many to be the first recognised diving suit (Karl Heinrich Klingert , 1797). "It consists of a jacket and trousers made of waterproof leather, a helmet with a porthole, and a metal front. It is linked to a turret with an air reservoir. The reservoir cannot replenish itself, so the suit has a limited dive time duration."

• My thanks to Zazie for tweaking my interest and for providing the 3rd image.
• Underwater history and timeline.
• Wikipedia /Inventors /Scuba UK history.
  
• Historical Diving Society Monographs.
• 'L'historique de la plongée de l'antiquité à nos jours'. (source of first image)

The above images come from a selection of historical geology, mineralogy and mining books from Hungary (some are in german and some, hungarian). I know the first image comes from 'Fichtel - Beytrag zur Mineralgeschichte von Siebenbürgen 1-2.Nürnberg, 1780'.

'Slaying the Big Bear and the Sea Monster' - 1883

This is a satire about the impeachment of the incumbent political heavyweights, the founder of Mitsubishi and the largest Japanese ship owner by politicians from a rival party. (somewhere in the Kosho section at Waseda University)












The Tahitian jungle scenes and maps of Tahiti and Hawaii come from 'Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842. By Charles Wilkes, U.S.N. Commander Of The Expedition, Member Of The American Philosophical Society, Etc. In Five Volumes, And An Atlas. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard. 1845.'

And at the time of posting this I've found that the Smithsonian Institution has a large web exhibition devoted to the expedition ('The United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842') but they have posted their maps in greyscale so the above images are better in my opinion, despite the age related damage.

'The cacina, a sacred dance, at the Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico'

IN: 'Report upon United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian, in charge of Capt. Geo. M. Wheeler, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army' 1875-1889.

The Tahiti/Hawaii and Native American images are part of the new upload (>1000 images) to the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection (via: The Map Room).




From: 'Description des octants et sextants anglois, ou quarts de cercle a reflection, avec la maniere de servir de ces instrumens, pour prendre toutes sortes de distances angulaires, tant sur mer que sur terre : précédée d'un mémoire sur une nouvelle construction de ces instrumens; et suivie d'un appendix, contenant la description et les avantages d'un double-sextant nouveau' (1775) - João Jacinto de Magalhães.






















From: 'O engenheiro portuguez..' in 2 volumes (1728, 1729) by Manuel de Azevedo Fortes.










From: 'Diccionario dos termos technicos de historia natural extrahidos das obras de Linnéo..' by Domenico Vandelli 1788.

There is an extensive selection of historic science monographs from Portugal at the University of Porto's Faculty of Science. It's a great site with thumbnail views. (probably via Archivalia)










From the Polish childrens' book 'Treny' with illustrations by Zofia Stryjenska from 1930 (accompanying 16th century poetry by Jan Kochanowski).










From: 'Heraldica to iest osada kleynotow rycerskich y wiadomosc znakow herbownych' by Józef Aleksander Jabłonowski, 1772.

[These 2 Polish books were found somewhere among the extensive and exceptional Digital Library of Poland]

From 'Niederländische Historienbibel', 15th century
(Bayerische Staatsbibliothek).

This (truncated and spliced) image depicts half-buried statues from Cornelis de Bruijn's 1718 book 'Voyages de Corneille le Brun par la Moscovie, en Perse, et aux Indes Occidentales'. The statues are from the area near Persepolis (Naqsh-i-Rustam in Iran). They date to the Achaemenid Empire (~550-330 BC).

It comes from the extensive MAVI site (Musée Achéménide Virtuel et Interactif) which presents an inventory of the heritage relating to the historical space and time during which the Middle East from the Indus to the Mediterranean was under the control of the Achaemenid Persian empire. Many world universities are involved. I have to say that when I was playing around in this site a week or 2 ago I found it to be quite frustrating/annoying. But there is a 15 minute film in computerspeak english that explains how to use the site, which of course I didn't watch because I'm a male. [pdf background]

'Delight of Hearts' -
an early 17th century copy of a Persian cosmography map
by Zakariya' ibn Muhammad Qazwini. (from Rylands Library)

'Allegory on the death of the Earl of Arundel' by Wenceslaus Hollar.

'Aeneas in the underworld. State 2' by Wenceslaus Hollar.

The University of Toronto Libraries have a brand new and very large web exhibition of some 2,500 works by 17th century Czech-English artist, Wenceslaus Hollar. It is a fantastic site with mouseover enlargements, print categories for easy browsing and a flash zoom if the large images somehow aren't good enough.










The 3 images above come from a 15th century compilation manuscript featuring the 2 major works of German humanist, Albrecht von Eyb: 'Ehebüchlein' (The Marriage Book) and 'Spiegel der Sitten' (The Mirror of Morals). The manuscript has quite a few (what appear to be) zodiac-like vignettes through its 60 pages and is online at Die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. {illustrations start p26; click 'Miniaturansicht').




The University of Hamburg have a number of beautiful historic maps and views of the city including the 1730 map (spliced from screencaps) above by J Covens & C Mortier.


[click everything in sight for larger versions (in most cases)]

Many of these books and illustrators could have made up material for individual posts (and may do in the future) but sometimes I just have to at least partially empty the desktop and clear my head.

Karlsruher Tulpenbuch

The Badische Landesbibliothek in Karlsruhe (State library of Baden-Württemberg) recently posted a site devoted to the 'Karsruhe Tulpenbuch' (~1730). [thumbnail pages, multiple size image slideshow ('Bilderschau') and some large, high resolution examples ('Großformat-Abbildungen')] {via}

Karlsruhe in SW Germany was founded by and named after Margrave Karl Wilhelm of Baden-Durlach in 1715. He lived in the Karlsruhe Schloss (castle) whose baroque gardens were arranged in a concentric pattern and the 32 avenues radiating from the central tower gave rise to the circular shape of the town.

If you read german there is a lot of background available about the history of the gardens and the Karl Wilhelm family but the web translations left me more confused than enlightened. There are about 72 illustrations available (obviously not all tulips) and check out the links at the bottom of the page.

• The introduction page has a microfilm copy of the estate layout.
• Aerial views of the Karlsruhe Schlossgarten from recent times (now including botanical gardens) - about the first 6 pictures.
• A map of the area from 1843.
  

Outsider Soul

Between 1968 and 1977 Mingering Mike produced more than 50 albums and a similar number of 45rpm singles on his own record labels. He performed for sellout audiences and wrote and starred in 9 films. This was the stuff of legends ... and fertile imaginations.

The real Mike, from Washington DC, did in fact record some songs at home with his cousins on a reel-to-reel player and even paid for some acetate pressings. His brother was the manager of a local music venue so Mike got to attend a fair number of shows that helped fuel his desire for a recording career. But that's about as far as it went. In lieu of a life of fame and fortune Mike redirected the enormous energy of his inner life into creating an imaginary career for his alter-ego, Mingering Mike.

He sketched, painted and wrote album covers and liner notes from scrap carboard, fastidiously added grooves to 'records' and made up record label names, song titles, tour diaries and included testimonial quotes from real and imagined supporters of Mingering Mike.

The obsession was also his escape during his years in hiding after going AWOL to avoid being sent to Vietnam. Some time after he resurfaced following the blanket amnesty offered by Jimmy Carter in 1977, Mike gave up his private pastime to get a real job and the Mingering Mike legacy of his youth found its way into storage.

Cue 2003 and the storage company changes hands and rather than give any leeway for late rental fees, Mike's possessions are auctioned off and the Mingering Mike collection ends up at a 2nd hand record shop in DC. An avid fringe collector, Dori Hadar, discovers the work and after intense discussion with acquaintances on the Soul Strut forums, interest from major media outlets is piqued and the real Mike is tracked down, interviewed and reintroduced to his imaginary past.

It's naive and unsophisticated certainly, and as individual pieces these wouldn't ordinarily have an artistic life beyond a suburban bedroom wall perhaps, but as a body of work the Mingering Mike collection is something of a testimony itself to all our creative inner lives and obsessions. I can relate to it as a kind of psychological quirk because it isn't pretentious or beyond the ability of most people and it's something like 'some things' I dreamt or half attempted, after a fashion, as a youngster myself.

'Mingering Mike - The Amazing Career of an Imaginary Soul Superstar' by Dori Hadar will be released by Princeton Architectural Press in a couple of weeks.

Incidentally, Mike - who has been careful to maintain his anonymity, although the book has early photographs of him - has been inspired by the recent interest in his erstwhile outsider art career and at the time the book was written had started constructing a portable record player from cardboard for his next gallery showing.

I was sent a copy of this book (without obligation). It's just under 200 pages, with a couple of essays and a description of the collection (re)discovery and subsequent meetings with Mike. It also has a large number of colour photographs of the Mingering Mike collection, from where the above images were scanned.

Armour to Paper - On the Origins of Etching

"Repetition is not the enemy of genius, an artist can exercise
creativity by acknowledging what ought to be reiterated."
[Richard Shiff on AC Quatremère de Quincy's praise for Raphael²]

Memento Mori - Death & the Devil Surprising Two Women (source)

Soldier and Woman (etching on iron)

Landsknechte (renaissance mercenaries)

"The individualized soldier, the infantryman, made a late first appearance in the arts. Although wars could not have been fought without him, in ancient and medieval art he remained a notational cypher. He could not pay his way in the visual record, as could the centurion or the knight; but he was also absent because, unlike serving women, jugglers, friars, peasants and huntsmen, he was not wanted there.

Around 1500, in Switzerland and southern Germany, this conspiracy of silence was broken. In drawings and prints, glass painting and sculpture, the soldier emerged as a type, often strongly indivdualized; as a stereotype, familiar and real enough to bear a considerable weight of moral and allegorical resonance; and as a member of an occupational group whose appearance, way of life and relationships with comrades, civilians, and women were of avid if perturbing interest. By the end of the 1530s, artists had enabled us to know the soldier through visual evidence as we cannot know the practitioners of any other pursuit."
{JR Hale 'The Solider in Germanic Graphic Art of the Renaissance'
IN: Journal of Interdisiplinary History 1986 (85-114)}.

Officer Accompanied by Four Soldiers

Three Designs for a Fountain

On the left: Frontpiece of architecture in 3 parts: below the Holy Family, in center the Crucifixion, and above the Resurrection and the two Apostles Peter and Paul.
On the right: Arabesque with Satyrs

Venus Accompanied by Cupid Playing the Lute [see also: Lute iconography]

Three Old Women Beating a Devil on the Ground (source)

Man Embracing a Woman

Mary with Jesus (source)

Ornamental Fillet with Seahorse (source)

A Trophy of Arms (source)

Bacchanalian Scene

Battle of Tritons

Alphabet of Roman Capital Letters with Metaphorical Ornaments

Genius or simply Ingenious?

Daniel Hopfer (~1470-1536) was trained as an arms etcher at a time when Augsburg in southern Germany was one of the main centres for the production of weapons and armour in Europe.

As circumstances would have it, Hopfer was a contemporary of some of the greatest artists in german history - Lucas Cranach, Hans Bergkmair, Hans Holbein (each known as: 'The Elder') and Albrecht Dürer, among others - who were responsible for propelling Germany, in some senses, to the forefront of the Renaissance as it emerged from Italy at the beginning of the 16th century.

Hopfer's seminal contribution to this milieu was to adapt the etching technique, that he had applied to the decorative embellishment of suits of armour for an exclusive clientele, to a reproductive printing process that could distribute his artistic output to a larger population. The attraction of this new technique (originally undertaken on iron plates) was that, whereas previously an artist was reliant upon the specialist engravers and woodcut artisans to faithfully render their artistic vision in a reproducible form, etching required little in the way of specialist skills beyond competency as a draughstman. In etching, a needle is used to draw the illustration onto a soft wax ground coating which is then eaten into the plate in an acid bath. The popularity of etching would rise to challenge both the wood and metal engraving methods.

"Although the Swiss goldsmith, draftsman and printmaker Urs Graf actually produced the first dated example of etching in 1513, Daniel Hopfer, a German artist who probably made engravings on armor, is generally credited with inventing the etching process and showing it to his compatriot Albrecht Dürer, who in addition to his other talents was a prolific engraver. Dürer became the first well-known northern artist to try his hand at the new technique, producing six etched iron plates from 1515 to 1518."

The elaborate decoration of armour was most likely imported into Germany from Italy at the end of the 15th century. Rediscovered ancient Roman motifs that came to be known as grotesques as well as Islamic arabesque patterns emerged as favoured ornamental designs. Grotesques in particular, with their imaginary monsters and bizarre human figures among leafy garlands, candelabra and altars, provided a fertile decorative style for modification and reinterpretation. It was within this flux of renaissance influence that Hopfer produced both plate etchings of armour designs and armour decoration from printed illustrations. Add to this mix his fondness for emulating, modifying and borrowing from Italian renaissance art and it is not difficult to conclude that Hopfer played one of the most pivotal roles in spreading the decorative styles of the renaissance through Germany and Europe.

"On the whole, scholarship of arms etchings and other figured and ornamental arms decorations is still in its infancy. While Hopfer's contribution as a printmaker is generally acknowledged, his arms etchings are at least as important, and, like his prints, reveal the role that Italian ornamental motifs had on his transformation from a Late Gothic to a Renaissance artist. The etched motifs on the horse armour in the Landeszeughaus, for example, which were created shortly before 1510, show this important transition [figure 10]. Here he mixed intricate and fanciful Late Gothic foliate tendrils with Italianate fruit festoons that are clearly Renaissance in character."¹

It was common practice (and not regarded particularly as a negative phenomenon) in the early 16th century printing environment for workshops to engage in various forms of copying: replication, imitation and hybrid adaptations. Creating and circulating printed images facilitated the spread of visual information and helped accelerate stylistic changes. And artists, who had close relationships with the workshops, probably encouraged these activities so that their works were reaching a wider audience. Hopfer had married into a family of printers so it's not surprising to find that he often (but not always) copied, borrowed from or modified works by Dürer, Mantegna, Antonio Giovanni da Brescia, Marcantonio, Flötner, Cranach and others in producing his etchings. Although he favoured illustrating decorative motifs, as can be seen in the sample images above, Hopfer's etchings incorporated visual elements from a wide variety of both religious and secular subject matter.

"By working in and between different media, Hopfer facilitated the expansion of the Power of Women topos from the margins of etched armor into the center of repeatable works on paper, demonstrating the versatility of this theme concerning sexual morality and social heirarchies and its appeal to various kinds of markets"²

• Unless otherwise stated, all the images above (click for large versions spliced from screencaps) were obtained from the outstanding Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco site.
• ²Although only a modest extract is available for free, Freyda Spira's University of Pennsylvania (History of Art) 2006 dissertation, "Originality as Repetition / Repetition as Originality: Daniel Hopfer (ca. 1470-1536) and the Reinvention of the Medium of Etching" was a primary source for much of the information recorded above.
• ¹'Arms, Armor and Fine Arts' © Peter Krenn is a great overview article at the MyArmoury site - it is definitely worth (painlessly) joining to view larger versions of images (among other things). They seem to have quite a selection of resources as well.
• Bildinex have a number decorated portraits (mostly), by Hopfer.
• The Schleswig-Holstein Museum have a small number of Hopfer illustrations.
• Articles from the Metropolitan Museum's Timeline History of Art: 'Arms and Armor in Renaissance Europe'; 'The Decoration of European Armor'; 'Techniques of Decoration on Arms and Armor'.
• Daniel Hopfer at Artcylopedia.
  
• 'What is a print?'/History of Printmaking.
• The modest 'Early Modern Painter-Etcher' exhibition site at Smith College Museum of Art and New York Times review.
• 'The Magic World of the Grotesque' catalogue review via MrH (see: Faces of the Grotesque and Clovio and the Farnese Hours)
• Out of a mixture of curiosity and interest: informal lecture notes from a current 'History of Prints' course at the University of Central Florida (Dr F Martin); George Goodall's history of books and printing timeline at Facetation; chronology of 1501 to 1600 (incorporates literary/artistic/political events)
  
• The Daniel Hopfer article at wikipedia is ok.

Party Fish

Piscatorial couturier Franciscus Valentijn debuted his garish new season collection at the 1726 Nieuw Oost Indien show.

"Colour is the new scale for the smart fish set", said the beaming Valentijn. "Demure is dead. Stripes, high contrast and bold tints are where it's at."

Citing Louis Renard as an influence, Valentijn said his background as evangelist and cartographer for the Dutch East India Company gave him an opportunity to view the East Asian fashion scene first hand.

"These fish from Indonesia and Ceylon are not shy. They aren't restricted by the narrow palette of their conservative European cousins. They are colour experimentalists. I'm just trying to bring this sense of joy and vivacity to life. My collection is for the party fish inside all of us."

Indeed. We're hooked!