Toy Gun Patents

A toy airplane water pistol. Perfect for swooping
in and shooting your sister from behind.
1952 Invented by William R. McLain

The Strato Gun for Futuristic Products Company of Detroit, Mich.
The Strato was a cap gun with a plastic chrome finish.
1953 Invented by Sidney Wasserman and Allen M. Sterns

A Tom Corbett Space Cadet rifle designed for toy maker Louis Marx.
1953 Invented by Mahlon Hirsch

The Pyrotomic Disintegrator Pistol.
This toy gun was made by space-toy manufacturer Pyro Plastics Corp.
You can see a photo of the pistol at toyraygun.com
1953 Invented by Grover C. Schaible

A toy cap pistol made to look like a ray gun.
This design was for the J. & E. Stevens Sales Company.
1953 Invented by Frederick J. Maywald

The Temple of Flora

The Superb Lily

The Maggot-Bearing Stapelia

The Sacred Egyptian Bean

Tulips

The Night-Blowing Cereus

The Large Flowering Sensitive Plant

The Nodding Renealmia

The grandiose vision of botanist Dr Robert Thornton (1768-1837) was to restore Britain to her rightful artistic place, ahead of France and Germany, with the release in subscription form of his opus, The Temple of Flora, over a few years at the beginning of the 19th century.

Thornton inherited the family fortune in 1799 which allowed him to leave medicine and concentrate on his botanical interests. Royal patronage, world exploration and specimen collection and a quest for scientific knowledge encouraged an expansion in botanical illustration.

Thornton's plan, in part a homage to Linnaeus, was to release a 3 volume set divided into sexual characteristics, nomenclature and his beloved images. The best artists and engravers of the day were commissioned. Thornton himself was the artistic director but he also contributed some painting and engraving to the enterprise.

Unfortunately, war broke out and coupled with a downturn in interest for such an elaborate publication, great financial losses were sustained. Despite running a lottery for a smaller quarto edition, the venture ultimately sent Thornton bankrupt and he was destitute at the time of his death. From a proposal that included 70 illustrations, a total of 33 hand-coloured mezzotint engravings were eventually completed by 1807.

The embellished and at times surreal nature of the images were to be the lasting value of Thornton's Temple of Flora. Unusually, specimens were portrayed in unnatural landscape settings which Thornton wove in as part of the text, reducing the scientific importance even further. For one image he wrote: "The clouds are disturbed, and every thing looks wild and sombre about the dragon ARUM, a plant equally poisonous as fetid."

• All of the images from The Temple of Flora are displayed at the Audubon House Gallery of Natural History - (the above images come from here)
• Another complete set of Flora plates at Arader Galleries (if you like the images above, it's worth looking at both sites simply because there are differences in brightness and colour from variation in print runs and imaging techniques)
• Audubon Gallery biography of Thornton and account of the book preparation.
• Some more information from George Glazer Gallery.

Margaret Preston

Despite being affluent and white, modernist printmaker Margaret Preston (1875-1963) was a committed supporter of aboriginal imagery at a time when it went largely unnoticed and her print titles often reflect the influence. Most all of her prodigious legacy of woodblock prints, etchings and paintings have a distinctly Australian feel, whether by their peculiar colouring or themes of native flora and landscapes.

"Preston believed that Aboriginal art provided the key to establishing a national art that reflected the soul of the vast and ancient continent of Australia."

It is my great misfortune to discover that I missed the recent exhibition of Preston works in Sydney. I notice however that people from Melbourne (including my favouritest pun-mistress, boynton --- about the only website I visit every day --- who I'm hoping will attend and report back) will have an opportunity to see the Preston exhibition until January 2006 at the Ian Potter Gallery in Federation Square.

• 99 thumbnails of Preston images at Australian Prints
• The Margaret Preston website, hosted by the State Gallery of NSW
• An essay about Preston from Roger Butler, curator of Prints & Drawings at the National Gallery of Australia

I think these are magnificent personally and a great lesson in cross cultural acceptance and support. [The names and date of each work above is in the image URL]

Ceci n'est pas un Livre

"A single copy of a book is a curious thing. Even when part of a large edition, it is rarely considered disposable. People have books on their shelves that they haven't looked at in years, yet they don't throw them out or even give them away. A passing glance at the shelf gives a reassuring feeling, a reminder of the knowledge one has absorbed.

The oldest books we have in the shape we are familiar with-- folded pages sewn through the fold--are Coptic manuscripts from Ethiopia and Egypt. They date from about the years 100 - 400. This change in form from the scrolls previously used required a change in the technology of parchment production. The folded page was written on both sides, where the scroll used only one side of the skin. The relationship between the structure of the book and the development of its materials continues to evolve."
Richard Minsky

Jo Anna Poehlmann
Drawings in a Nutshell
Hand colored and pencil lettered stone lithograph on
accordion folded Strathmore paper in walnut shell
with other nuts in burlap sack. 1985

William Drendel
San Sebastiano Al Mare
Fabriano paper, koa wood boards,
birch arrow in Ethiopian coptic binding. 1985

Katherine NG
Spirit Vessel
Letterpress, woven paper.

Kathleen Amt
Content out of Context
Handmade paper sewn on tapes,
rubber stamp images and words, mixed media. 1987

Chefs: Sharon Lewis & Melissa Kaye
The Ten Commandments "Thou Shall Eat My Words"
Designer: Paul Gelbman 2005

Barton Lidicé Beneš
Censored Book
Book tied in rope, nailed, gussoed, painted. 1974

• The Center for the Bookarts - old site - exhibition archives.
• The Center for the Bookarts - new site.

Joost Swarte

Illustrations © Joost Swarte. More here and here.

Australian Library Treasure

National Treasures from Australia's Great Libraries begins its display today at the National Library in Canberra. I'm not sure how long the website has been up. There are 170 items of great artistic and/or literary value, parochial ephemera and some honest to goodness kitsch. Which is which is a matter of taste and perspective.

Le Petit Journal

Le Petit Journal. Très jolie!

Horologium

Jacques Alexandre (1653-1734) was a Benedictine monk from Orléans in France who devoted his life to the study of mechanics, physics and mathematics in the monastery at Vendôme. The engravings here are from one of the earliest french works on horology (the art of clockmaking) - Traité général des horloges - published in 1734.

The treatise records the known history of horology to the time of writing and outlines in detail the various mechanisms of a timepiece by way of technical dictionary, accompanied by precise engravings of which there are 27 page plates in total.

Alexandre wasn't particularly driven to publish all of the papers his intellectual enquiries produced but he did issue a book about the nature of tides that relied on the belief that the earth rotated around the moon. Despite the obvious error, it contributed to the overall body of work on the subject.

• Traité général des horloges by Jacques Alexandre is online at the Florence Institute and Museum of the History of Science but you'll need to go to page 4 of the digital library - I can't extract the URL from the javascript. I don't complain about this site though. It's well stocked and pretty easy to use - hit the icon that looks like a mountain to get thumbnail views of all illustrations in any publication.
• Bookseller review of Traité général des horloges
• Catholic encylopedia on Jacques Alexandre
• Glossary of horological terms

Snake Oil

• National Library of Medicine: Time Tide and Tonics exhibition
• Medicine and Madison Avenue exhibit at Duke University
• Drug Trade - Therapy, Pharmacy and Commerce in Early Modern Europe at Oxford University's Museum of the History of Science
• Washington State Univsersity College of Pharmacy's A History of Pharmacy in Pictures
• The Skeptiseum - Alternative Medicine
• Vanderbilt University Medical Center - Advertising Cards
• Patent Medicines - Quack Cures - Snake Oil gallery
• FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research gallery
• Vintage Pharmacy Advertisements - [this is a big download]
• History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills, by Robert B. Shaw 1916 at Project Gutenburg [another big download - pictures are black and white]
• The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America before Federal Regulation from Quackwatch
• Wikipedia - Patent Medicine