Monday, August 27, 2007

Offcuts

2 medieval flags
[There are five web pages of scans from the original manuscript at the Lithuanian Trade Union of Customs Personnel site]
"'Banderia Prutenorum' is a manuscript made by Jan Dlugosz (1415-1480) containing 56 images of flags captured from the Teutonic Knights by the Polish after the battle of Tannenberg (15 July 1410, Grunwald, nowadays in Poland) and designed in 1448 by the Polish painter Stanislao Durink."

UPDATE (Sept. 2009): this book has now been digitised by SLUB Dresden.


flourished calligraphic letters



Ornamental letter 'x'

'The Scribal Pattern Book' (MS. 439) from ~1515 by master calligrapher Gregorius Bock is an outstanding textual manuscript and if you only look at one thing from this post, go to Yale's Beinecke Library database and type in "ms. 439". Bock presents the alphabet in a number of different scripts together with decorative initials. See: a short descriptive table of contents and an intriguing paper from 1994 by Susan Laflin about using Bock's work as a basis for computer reading of gothic text.


sketch of ceiling hanging displays

From: 'The life and work of Sir Basil Spence 1907-76: architecture, tradition and modernity' project site at the University of Warwick History of Art Department.


facial expressions

"'The Theatrical Speaker; Or an Elucidation of the Whole Science of Acting', 1807 pub. Smeeton folding engraved plate."


18th cent. male/female costumes

'Zur Geschichte der Kostume' {Costume History} [c.1890]


anatomical sketches

Two plates from 'Anatomia Corporis Humani' by Pierre Dionis, 1696. Although they're not very sophisticated, I'm apt to collect any anatomical drawings from history if they don't appear to be online in any medical history sites. Very tangentially, I came across Michael Stolberg's long but interesting article, 'A Woman Down to Her Bones - The Anatomy of Sexual Difference in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries' [IN: Isis, volume 94 (2003), pages 274–299] which belongs as much to gender studies as it does to the history of medicine. LINK (click 'html').


medieval ship and King with swords


2 knights on horseback jousting

"'Effigies and Arms of Kings, Bannerets, and Knights in the Time of King Henry the Sixth', mid 19th c - Ms4205 Larleian Lib Brit Mus."


closeup of eye made out of building labyrinth

© Peter Lazarov - (from) A Selection of Engravings 2003 The third volume of the 'Endgrains Editions'.


anthropomorphic printing press

'The Man Wots Got the Whip Hand of 'Em All' by William Heath, 1820.
After going to some not inconsiderable trouble to remove the watermark and upload this image, I found a better quality unblemished version here [at the excellent Calisphere site at the University of California]

The above seven images were found trawling through the back catalogues at PBA Rare Book Galleries ('browse catalogues') - they have reasonable sized images [mostly not watermarked].


allegory of scientists before God

"Enric Cristòfor Ricart i Nin Montserrat's Apotheosis I xylography engraving on box"


bullfighting etching

"Ismael Smith i Marí Hormigón I, 1919 (Bullfighting) etching drypoint"


stooped old 'gnome' with deer head crown

"Joan Vila i Moncau Fantasy etching"


fantasy hat made of a village

"Joan Vila i Moncau Woman's head with cap, which is a village"


abstract overlapping shapes

"Joan Vilacasas Quasar astrometry etching aquatint - abstraction"

The above images come from Biblioteca de Montserrat: 'Gravadors Catalans del Segle XX' - it's a nice print exhibition site (in english).


2 spiral staircases in a library


print of books on a shelf


library scene sketch


books


bookshelf print

The above images are all copyright Professor Rolf Escher.
If you read German it will help. Although there is not a lot of material that I could find and nor are the images as large as we'd like, Escher makes wonderful prints of actual libraries (and books, bags and some other things). I know he has published some books too but I didn't collect the details. Home site; Essen; Kunstdunst.


meteorolgy instruction sketch



comparative planet sizes

(Representation of the Comparative Sizes of the Planets)

"'Astronomischer Bilder-Atlas' is a collection of engraved plates published sometime around 1870 by W. Nitzschke of Stuttgart, Germany. They are a German translation of a set first published in England by James Reynolds in 1850." At the independent Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology, Missouri.


microscopic illustration of an ant

This picture of an ant is (said to be) from one of the rarest scientific books of the 17th century. 'Micrographia Nova' [1687] was the response by Johann Griendel to the landmark Robert Hooke treatise, 'Micrographia' from 1655. Griendel's improvements to the microscope provided a greater field of vision and it was the first German book devoted to the microscope. The image comes from the University of Oklahoma Libraries History of Science Collection and the whole book (in photocopy quality) is available at Kurt Stuber's wonderful online library. See also: Microscopy books at the Gemmary. {Info. from the Digital Clendening}


allegorical picture of optics and heavens

I didn't really find anything much out about this homage to optics other than it is by Zacharias Traber from 1690, also at Oklahoma's History of Science Collection.


opera character sketch

"Pan Zdanowicz w roli Pigułki w operze Szarlatan" by Jan Ligber, sometime before 1814 and somewhere in the Polona site.


alchemy laboratory


Bearing an uncanny resemblance to the BibliOdyssey laboratory mid-blog post preparation, this image comes from a treatise by Johann Rudolph Glauber, a Dutch-German apothecary, alchemist and chemist. 'Opera Omnia Chymica' was published in 1651 but I can't remember where this image comes from. Glauber (1604-1670) was one of those true straddlers of the alchemy/chemistry world, believing in the Philosopher's Stone but also discovering Manganese and devising methods of producing nitric and sulphuric acids and fertilisers. (Galileo, wiki, alchemy)


opera scene poster

Opera advertisement from 1878 in the Trinity College of Music Mander & Mitchenson Theatre Collection (click 'The Catalogue' and then good luck: it's not a user friendly site)


dumb looking victorian-era fellow

"-m-yes Mums"
'Mr Wright (of the Theatre Royal Adelphi) as Tilly Slowboy in "The Cricket on the Hearth"' by Madeley 1847 also at Jerwood Library. Incidentally, Madeley did a couple of anthropomorphic characters in a previous post.


watercolour medieval soldier


watercolour medieval soldier (detail of face)

"Original watercolor signed by Gerasch; standing figure in military costume with cuirass, helmet, sword, leaning on staff of pike." c. 1580.

This image and detail come from a relatively new site (May '07) with an enormous quantity of military prints. 'Prints, Drawings & Watercolors from the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection' at Brown University seems to include their (already online) collection of Napoleonic prints but there is much more in here. We are slightly stymied due to there being no browsing feature ("a" returns >2000 prints), no metadata categories and although the prints are huge (click the detail above to see the size at highest resolution) the images can't be downloaded (try as I might). Consequently, the above images are spliced from many screencaps. Despite these perceived shortcomings, it is a formidable collection. {To be fair, this is an ongoing project and over 6000 prints will eventually become available)
Update: Peter, the Curator of the Military Collection, wrote to advise that you can now download low resolution images (they are about screen size).


Just a couple of other things..

9 comments :

Suzanne said...

Yay! I always find myself in such great and inspiring company here on your blog! Thank you so much for linking to me. Oh, and thanks for previously reminding me about my academic status here on Thee Holy Interweb. :)

Unknown said...

As much as it pains me to point this out, the first item in today's delightful collection is from the Lithuanian Trade Union of Customs Personnel, not a Latvian Labour Union.

Although I'm sure we Latvians would be delighted to claim credit for such a wonderful manuscript, I'm sure our southern cousins would feel just a little put out by that! :)

peacay said...

You're very welcome Suzanne.

And mkuplens - Ouch! Fixed. Thanks.

Andreas said...

I'd very much like to know where to find the digitized costumes book (Costüme and Kostüme resp., by the way, not Kostume). Any link?

As to the military images collection at Brown: I have rarely seen such a lot of work and money thrown into a site which is such useless to the user. The viewing interface is a nightmare, the copyfraud messages are a nuisance, and the missing full images are showing pure contempt for internet users.

peacay said...

Zur Geschichte der Kostüme
First ed.

Andreas said...

@pecay: Thanks. I knew this link, but it's rather useless since the scans are so poor. I was just thrilled with the idea that finally a better digitized version would have emerged online.

Lesley said...

Your blog just astounds me! Those etchings by Prof. Escher look like a library in Gormengast.

Nancy Ewart said...

Another fabulous post on your blog; you never fail to delight me. I agree with you on the Brown collection. What is the point of all that copy right protection? Those who want to steal (for whatever reason) are not stopped by such means. It only hurts those like us who are motivated by love of art and history.

Unknown said...

Thanks for the link to the anatomy article by Michael Stolberg, Peacay! I didn't know it, and just downloaded it for a nice Sunday read.

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