The Print Farm

Barns
Colour Lithograph by John C Menihan 1937

Mowing
Etching by Peter Moran 1887

The Boyer Place
Wood Engraving by Grace Thurston Arnold Albee 1946

American Farm Scenes No. 3
Hand Coloured Lithograph by Frances Flora Palmer 1853

December Afternoon
Lithograph by Jackson Lee Nesbitt 1993

The Farmscape Exhibition - Remembering the Family Family Farm - 150 Years of American Prints at Max Kade-Erich H. Markel Department of Graphic Arts, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas.

The 37 Nats of Burma

"The nats of Burma make up a structured system of animistic spirits,
predating the advent of Theravāda Buddhism but coexisting with it and
with other systems of divination and prediction such as astronomy and alchemy."

The Sentient Beings according to the Burmese. Buddhist Cosmogony.

"The Burmese ideas of Sentient Beings, borrowed from India, represent a philosophy dealing with the evolution of the soul. First, in the Nether Worlds we have the evil soul, then in the present world we have the normal soul of man, rising to the higher soul of the angel in the nearer heavens. Next we have the soul getting the better of the body in the Rúpá world of the higher angels, and lastly, the soul dissociated from the body in the Arúpá, or immaterial, worlds, waiting for Nirvána or diccolution". In the Burmese Buddihist Cosmogony, all living beings are divided into three classes: - Kamá, generating; Rúpá, corporeal ungenerated; Arúpá, incorporeal. These three classes are a divided into thirty-one species, each with its bón (bhúmi, place, state, stage, region) or seat. [...] "

No. 1. Thagyá nat. No. 2. Mahágirí nat.

21. Maung Pó Tú nat. 22. Yun Bayìn nat.

A Burmese map of the world, showing traces
of Medieval European map-making.

Hell according to the Burmese.

"In the centre are those who are undergoing various punishments. Below these is depicted an unfortunate about to enter and begging for mercy, and near him is to be seen another who is reluctant to go forward and is being dragged and goaded onward. At the bottom of the picture is Thagyá judging the deceased; behind him are the four executioners. At the four corners are the abodes of the four great executioners -Yamahlá, Yamada, Yamaká and Yamamin, the abode of the last being represented as empty"

The thirty-seven nats, a phase of spirit-worship prevailing in Burma, by Sir R. C. Temple. With full-page and other illustrations. (published 1906) at NYPL
(where I spent way, way too much time today - like a child in a toyshop).

• Some background from BookRags.
• Spirit worship in SE Asia - 'Nat in my Classroom' - lecture notes originally from North Georgia College + State University.

La Belle Epoque

Edward Penfield
Affiche américaine pour la revue "Harper's Magazine"

Henry Gabriel Ibels
Dessin original pour les Maîtres de l'Affiche

Jules Chéret
Affiche pour le journal "Pan"

Jules Chéret
Troisième panneau sans texte : "La Pantomime"

Théophile Alexandre Steinlen
Affiche pour les "Motocycles Comiot"

Théophile Alexandre Steinlen
Dessin original pour les "Maîtres de l'Affiche"

G Boano
Affiche italienne pour le "Théâtre royal de Turin"

Les Maitres de l'Affiche ('The Poster Masters') was a monthly subscription publication released by L'Imprimerie Chaix between 1895 and 1900 that featured high quality lithographic posters by more than 90 renowned international artists.

The series helped promote the art-nouveau posters as a serious form of art, worthy of collection, media review and exhibition. The vivid colours and widespread appeal assured that this medium would come to typify fin de siècle Parisian society.

5 volumes (259 posters) were issued as Les maîtres de l'affiche : publication mensuelle contenant la reproduction des plus belles affiches illustrées des grands artistes, français et étrangers, éditée par L'Imprimerie Chaix and are online at NYPL (22 thumbnail pages).

Jules Chéret was the artistic director of the printery and contributed more than 60 posters to the series himself in addition to the magazine covers and works advertizing books, novels, plays &c.

• Les Maitres de l'Affiche (1895-1900) - A History at Yaneff International Gallery.
• A short review of Les Maitres de l'Affiche.
• La Belle Époque.

Konstboeck

If I was preparing BibliOdyssey posts on paper I think I'd have a rubber stamp that said: 'These look cool, but I can't tell you much about them because the translation software is just appalling'.
[but I complain too much]


Or at least, I can say that these images come from a collection of 141 plates known as the 'Schijnvoet Konstboeck' from the early 18th century. Simon Schijnvoet (sometimes spelled Schynvoet or Schynvoot) was a Dutch master builder, designer, architect, horticulturist, poet and collector.

[There is mention of Maria Sybilla Merian and Surinam but I don't understand the connection]


The illustrations were produced by Catharina Lintheimer, Alida Withoos, Johannes Bronckhorst and Pieter Holsteijn and are online at the Wageningen UR Library in Holland. It's an old website and this thumbnail page is a bit of a load - don't be fooled, the images look much better when enlarged.


Previously: The Tulip Book.

Industrial Drawing

'I wasn't surprised by the idea that people used to laboriously do something that computers now do automatically...The surprising thing about these drawings is that they were gratuitous -- they just did not need to be that nice. The illustrator could have simply drawn what was necessary — a partial sphere with a bit of shading, or whatever.'

'..the illustrators put a dazzling amount of attention into the shading and the different line-thicknesses and a dozen other details that are not only gratuitous, but which you are generally expected to not even perceive!'

'This struck me as a deeply strange kind of art.'

Sean M Burke has a different sort of online gallery - he has scanned his favourite images from a dozen or so engineering / industrial / mechanical / pneumatic design texts from the first half of the 20th century. [Thanks again D]

Guiard des Moulins

Christ en Majesté

Dragon

Grande Prostituée

Esprits impurs

Histoire des deux Témoins

I'm not sure what it means but I looked up 'mythology' at an Italian image database and it returned the bible.

The miniatures and illuminations here are from a 14th century French Guiard des Moulins version of the bible at the Gallica website of La Bibliothèque Nationale de France - Richelieu Manuscrits Français 155. The text is in what I presume is old french - at least, there are definitely french words in there but some of it looks to be latin too. There are 130 thumbnail images in that link.

van Geldorp

• There's no translation really necessary with P van Geldorp's 1881 silhouettes accompanying van Braga's Dutch poetry in De Muis Of De Gestoorde Nachtrust - online at Project Gutenburg.
• A small biography of van Geldorp at Lambiek.
• Some Boer war cartoons by van Geldorp among this exhibition at Griffioen Grafiek.
• I could only find 2 other examples of his work online - an ABC book image and a christmas illustration.
• The Silhouette Book.

Connecting with China

..great Kircher, the most miraculous mystagogue of Nature, the great magician..
JS Kestler

The Jesuit training received by the German arch-polymath, Athanasius Kircher, not only provided the background education from which he was to write some 44 books, it also gave him a strong connection to those missionaries allowed by the church to travel to the exotic lands that so interested Kircher in his studies.

Reports and documents on Tibet, India, China and Japan from other members of the order provided the widely popular renaissance figure with some factual or eye witness material, which Kircher incorporated into his 1667 encyclopedic tome, China Monumentis.

The book was hugely successful, translated and republished many times over and became the fundamental text on Eastern (and particularly Chinese) culture for 2 centuries. It was the first western publication to document the chinese vocabulary and sanskrit alphabet and grammar. It also included accounts of oriental geography, zoology, religion, botany and history. Europeans first heard about the Indian caste system, the Great Wall of China, asbestos, pineapples and other exotic curiosities through Kircher's book.

It was somewhat flawed from the outset however. Kircher had overriding theories that tried to connect back the roots of the Chinese culture to Egypt and Europe wherever possible. His recording of intriguing facts is interspersed with flights of fancy and conjecture based at least in part on mystical beliefs. Still, it stands as an exhaustive treatise that helped promote a better understanding of the Eastern world at the very minimum.

• I nabbed the images here from Max Planck Institute's ECHO project (thumbnail page) There are perhaps another 40 or 50 illustrations in addition to those above.
• This is a list of chapter titles of China monumentis, qua sacris quà profanis, nec non variis naturae & artis spectaculis, aliarumque rerum memorabilium argumentis illustrata ['China, Illustrated Through its Monuments both Sacred and Profane, Together with Numerous Marvels of Nature and Art, and Accounts of other Memorable Matters'] - in latin, leading to another Max Planck digital copy of the book.
• The best images from this book (as I found out/remembered after uploading all of the images here) are at Stanford University - requiring a djvu program. The illustration list is at the bottom of the page. These are chapter titles in english.
  
• Wikipedia on Athanasius Kircher.
• This is probably the best commentary on the work (online at any rate), by Haun Saussy at City University, Hong Kong.
• A short account of the Sino-Chaldean aspect of Monumentis - depicted above - from the interesting She-Philosopher website.
• A short review of China Monumentis (part way down the page).
• A description of the Idol of 'Fombum' (mis-translation of 'Buddha' apparently) image above.
• This is a 2 page german review of China Monumentis [english translation].
• An alleged translation of Kircher's description of the 'flying cat' depicted above - part way down the page.
• Previous BibliOdyssey posts on Kircher (and I'm sure there will be more).
• Kircher posts at Giornale Nuovo: I, II, III, IV, V.