Multiplicity in Time and Space

These stunning hand-coloured engravings of exotic fish from Sri Lanka (extracted from a .pdf) are from:
'A Selection from the most Remarkable and Interesting of the Fishes Found on the Coast of Ceylon from Drawings made in the Southern Part of that Island from the Living Specimens by John Whitchurch Bennett, 2nd Ed. 1834'.
The work contains thirty illustrations in total and the Harvard University edition is available at the Internet Archive. (See related: html version of Tennant's 'Natural History of Ceylon' from 1861 - alas, the images are photocopy quality)

'Nagoo'

'An Account of Indian Serpents, collected on the Coast of Coromandel' by Patrick Russell, 1796. Russell was the botanist to the East India Company in Madras (Chennai). This is apparently the first book devoted to Indian snakes. The image, spliced together from screencaps, comes from somewhere in the Books, Manuscripts & Maps category at Christies (inadvertently following from a comment by Michael some weeks ago).

'All the World Going to See the Great Exhibition of 1851' by George Cruikshank.

"This image first appeared in Henry Mayhew’s 1851 or The Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and Family, Who Came Up to London to ‘Enjoy Themselves,’ and to See the Great Exhibition (London: David Bogue, [1851])."
[image and quote from this entry - where there is more info. - at one of my favourite sites: Princeton Graphic Arts Blog.]

'London in 1851' by George Cruikshank.

View from the Circus looking up Piccadilly - Proof for an illustration to be included in: '1851, or, The Adventures of Mr and Mrs Sandboys' by Henry Mayhew (from the British Museum Prints Database)








'An Overland Journey to the Great Exhibition. Showing a Few Extra Articles & Visitors' by (at one time) Punch Magazine illustrator, Richard Doyle. The book contains no text and the satirical parade of humans and animals on their way to Crystal Palace measured nine feet in length when all of the illustrations were joined together. The composite image is from PBA Galleries and the second illustration comes from the Great Exhibition Humorous Asides page at Kansas University's Spencer Library.

'The Arts and Manufactures of Ireland'

One of several designs for political caricatures on the Great Exhibition of 1851 drawn by George Augustus Sala (from the British Museum Prints Database)





'O Ful, Tru, un Pertikler Okeaawnt o bwoth wat aw seed un wat aw yerd, we gooin too Th' Greyt Eggshibishun, e Lundun, an a greyt deyle of Hinfurmashun besoide' by Oliver Ormerod (penned under his Rochdale, Lancashire pseudonym, Felley from Rachde).
"The title of the book (translated from the Rochdalian) is "A full, true and particular account of both what I saw and what I heard when going to the Great Exhibition, in London, and a great deal of information besides." (image and quote also from Kansas U.)

'Britannia's Great Party'

Punch Magazine on the Prince Consort and the Exhibition of 1851 (from Victorian Web) [See also: Punch Magazine illustrations by John Leech: Memorials of the Great Exhibition]


The prompt that made me look around for some satirical prints on the Great Exhibition of 1851 was receiving a (requested) copy of the catalogue (available online) from Melbourne's Monash University Library exhibition (until August 31) - Fifty Books for Fifty Years. "This is an exhibition of fifty books chosen by Monash academics and researchers.[..] The fifty participants have chosen items they have consulted in the course of their work. The result is a fascinating variety of books, many of which have never been displayed." If not for the thousand-or-so kilometres, I would definitely go.








Speaking of Melbourne, Sophie Cunningham is a publisher, journalist, writer and current editor of Meanjin, an Australian literary and culture magazine established more than sixty years ago. Sophie has posted a set of photographs of Meanjin covers to Flickr. Both the stylised Aboriginal figure in ceremonial* attire and emu head cover illustrations above remain under copyright and have been posted here with permission.








These engravings come from the first of Johann Forkel's ambitious 2-volume work, 'Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik' (General History of Music) [1788-1801]. These, together with a couple more similarly interesting illustrations can be found on the last pages of Tome I at the Universities of Strasbourg Digital Library (very little of visual interest in Tome 2). I presume the schematic in the first illustration above is a pedal control unit for a pneumatic organ. It's too early for steam. Forkel was a biographer of Bach and is often regarded as the founder of modern musicology. He was never able to complete the planned third volume in the series so this first German attempt at documenting the history of music stops at the beginning of the 16th century. (See: i, ii, iii)





Titlepage from 'Facetiae Pennalium', 1622, by Julius Zincgref from HAB. I know nothing about this book although I suspect it is philosophical in nature. Somewhere around I have a couple of links to emblemata books by him which might materialise here in the future.

'Een Gesigt van de Zuyker mool te Pasoeroeang met het Gebergte Artjoeno'

'De Tempel van Madjanpoeti van Binnen te Zien'

'De Berg Mirabie bij Banjoewangi'

Batavia 1656

Despite the terrible rendering of online translation of Dutch, I'm fairly confident all four images above relate to the Java region of Indonesia and are all* the first three are approximately from the second half of the 17th 18th century [*see the comments at the end of the post]. They are spliced screencaps from a new cartographic database of several hundred images relating to the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The collection consists mostly of maps (of course) - many fort outlines and lots of interesting and artistic map sketches - but there are the occasional scenic watercolour pictures as well. The material is hosted by the Image Bank at the National Archives of Holland, accessible from the advanced search page. From the 'Collectie/Archief' drop down menu, select 'Kaarten van de VOC', change the number of thumbnails you want to display per page down the bottom and then hit 'zoek'. It's all easy. [via/via]

'D'Haazendans' engraved by FW Zürcher, 1868.
Spliced from screencaps [Dutch National Archives Image Bank]

'De Muizenvreugd' engraved by FW Zürcher, 1868.
The Joy of Mice spliced from screencaps [Dutch National Archive Image Bank]

'Monialium Ebstorfensium Mappamundi'

This chromolithograph world map [spliced together from two sections] was made by Konrad Miller in 1896 and is a reproduction of a mappamundi produced in Hanover (I think) in 1300. Although the largest version doesn't quite magnify all the details, it nevertheless remains an interesting map. Note that Christ's head, hands and feet mark the vertical and horizontal axes. The digital version is hosted by MDZ.

Now, as I'm posting this entry, I've found a decent write up at the Henry Davis site. They advise that the map - the German equivalent of the 'Hereford Mappamundi' - is known as the 'Ebstorf Mappamundi' (image) and was produced in 1234 by Gervase of Tilbury.

'Kermis of geen Kermis?'
[I think: Village Fair or Not?]

This lithograph, with it's unusual scalloped vignettes, was produced by Joseph Vürtheim sometime between 1843 and 1875. The print imagery seems to imply that village fair recreation will lead to death and despair. The image was spliced from screencaps from the Amsterdam Archive Image Bank.








These fabulous squid and mosquito engravings come from Jan Swammerdam's classic 'Bibel der Natur' (1752). The whole book is (finally!) online at Berlin's Humboldt University E-Doc server. (note the thumbnail link top left; the text may be photocopy quality but the engravings are great: 'Höhere Auflösung'=high resolution)

The Dutch microscopist, Jan Swammerdam, conducted groundbreaking research into the development of insects and made significant contributions to human anatomy and scientific methodology. (see: i, ii, iii)











I jagged these odd engravings from 'Mathesis Caesarea' (1662) just because the idea of adding putti (cupids) to an otherwise rather dry reworking of Albert von Curtz's 'Amussis Fernandea' by Gaspar Schott (the book being about mathematics, geometry and military architecture) seems amusingly incongruous. The book is online at HAB. [Schott was assistant to Athanasius Kircher] See: Polybiblio.

Gossypium herbaceum and Gossypium arboreum

Rheum webbianum and Balanophora dioica

These plates (extracted from a .pdf) come from the beautiful book, 'Illustrations of the Botany and other Branches of the Natural History of the Himalayan Mountains and of the Flora of Cashmere' by J. Forbes Royle, 1839. The book was digitised by Missouri Botanical Gardens and is available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library.








'Allegorie op de Vrede' (Allegory of Peace) is by A. Zürcher 1814 (not sure if there's any relationship to the engraver of the rabbits and mice satires up above). The main image is fairly small but I managed to cobble together a fair sized detail of the spectacular ornamental typography from screen caps. This image comes from the Amsterdam Archive Image Bank and is definitely worth seeing in high resolution snippets within the constraints of the flash magnification box at the site.





'Zoilus' by Cyprian Norwid (search on his name at the Polish Digital Library - they have a large number of his works. As previously noted, Matt from Rashomon made a beautiful five minute collage-film from a range of Norwid prints)



Many, but not all, of the above images have been spot or background cleaned as the mood took me. As usual, click through the images to flickr and then click 'All Sizes' for larger format versions.

The title of this entry - Multiplicity in Time and Space - was a phrase I first heard used years ago by a physician describing the unique profile of symptoms associated with Multiple Sclerosis (the syndrome erratically affects various parts of the body for varying amounts of time).

There is no intended reference here to MS at all, but I've always thought it was an elegant turn of phrase and adequately describes the eclectic array of images above: produced by many people at different times in history and obtained from a range of sources. It was also the first thing that came into my head today when I was trying to summons forth a title.

More links? Try the bookmarks.

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