Japanese Toy Designs

The Ningyo-Do Bunko Database has more than 100 albums of late 19th/early 20th century watercolour sketches of toy designs.

By turns scary and intriguing (much like Japanese game shows and the garbled translations below) the selection of images above comes from the sixty albums in the Kyosen Guangucho section of the website.

[previously: Toying With Japan]

"The hotel Archive "mermaid sinus library" is a nationwide Taisho and Showa folk toy in a toy depicting Koizumi Kawasaki dipper (1877-1942)[..] autograph sketch. [..] Toys are covered by more than 5000 species rapidly, with the beauty of the work now is pretty low look at the local toy as big database and valuable data. [..] This "library database sinus Mermaid" is a paperback sinus mermaid image of the entire recorded works. [..] Warm and NATSUKASHII many local toy please enjoy."

"Koizumi Kawasaki (1877-1942), ne Sueyoshi,[..]the issue. [..] Alternatively, the mermaid-dong, Hitoshi Yoshi, and make [..]issue. []25年（1892）[..]1[..] Sakai was born[..], from infant to be good at painting in the Meiji 25 years (1892), then upward Sakai had lived in the first person genre painter who Introduction Taki Yoshi Nakai. [..] And the painting has been trained to go to Tokyo, Osaka or two years to make a nurse moved under Taki Kaoru return to the婿養子become a nurse after patch, newspaper and magazine illustration, printing genre material (Osaka, attractions, etc.)[]continued.
[..]36、7[..] Meiji circa 36,7 interest from local folk toy to cherish, including the main draw as a local toy. [..] Modernization under local toy will be out of ordinary people to appreciate the beauty of the painting from nature leave, as well as a workshop sponsored by the local toy, or mermaids, and the issue of Journal of Research on the Folk学的worth pursuing.
[..]　1979　759.9-27N Note: The local toy [..]Koizumi Kawasaki[..] to hold a mass meeting, Koizumi Kawasaki 27N-1979 759.9"

Leiden Blaeu Maps

The Blaeu family of map publishers dominated the Golden Age of Dutch cartography during the seventeenth century. Their sumptuous and ornate colour atlases remain the pinnacle of artistic mapmaking and a new site has been launched by the Archive of Leiden to showcase a gorgeous 6-volume work, 'Toonneel des Aerdrycks', produced in the mid-1600s.

The Dutch cartographic style was characterised by increasingly decorative embellishment that tended to highlight the development in exploration, trade and commerce. Imagery was derived from a combination of exotic contemporary scenes and elements of classical mythology.

The 6-volume series was apparently produced specifically for a Leiden Mayor from the Dutch East India Company. The work has become sufficiently fragile that public access to the original books is restricted; hence the books have been digitised. It hardly matters that there is no English at the website.

I'm not sure whether the selection of images (spliced screencaps) above of name plates and medallions really does this work the justice it deserves. Maps are a fairly difficult breed of illustration to display successfully in static form on the internet, so I went off on a bit of a tangent for a change. [Most of the above are from Volume 1 - I didn't even notice the other five until later on (the stupid is strong in me at times)]

'Toonneel des Aerdrycks' : click 'Bekijk de atlassen in de viewer' [direct link to viewer] ---- this is the best flash viewer I've seen. The viewing screen can be increased by maximizing your browser size. Note: click 'Kaartenindex' for thumbnail displays. There's a little arrow top right that gets rid of the sidebar to increase the viewing area. [Home page of Regionaal Archief Leiden] [via]
UPDATE (Jan 2013): the link to the map site has been updated but I'm not sure where/how to link direct to the viewer.