#OnThisDay in 1931, Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley died from pneumonia contracted after walking home in a snowstorm. In 1885, the self-educated farmer from Vermont, using a homemade camera, became the first person to photograph a snow crystal: https://buff.ly/3avvVnP#otd
Now just ONE DAY LEFT of our Fundraiser! The project is fuelled almost entirely by donations, so please do give something if you can 🙏 — https://buff.ly/2HeCzfZ
Sending to those signed up before midnight Dec 13th, our beautiful postcard packs — upcoming theme “THE HEAVENS”.
NEW ESSAY — “Rhapsodies in Blue”, in which Paige Hirschey explores the cyanotypes of Anna Atkins, discovering a form of botanical illustration that, rather than exhibit an artist’s mastery over nature, allowed specimens to “illustrate” themselves: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/anna-atkins-cyanotypes/
If you like what we do, and want to see it continue, then please do lend your support! Available to donors, our themed postcard packs: upcoming theme on... THE HEAVENS.
Front cover to The Cubies’ ABC, an alphabet book published in 1913 devoted to a satirical takedown of Impressionists, Cubists, Futurists, and all other pretenders to the crown of Art. More here: https://buff.ly/36sCemZ
Replace these “wireless telegraphs” with smartphones, update the dress a little, and this vision of "isolating technology" from a 1906 issue of Punch magazine could easily be from today: https://buff.ly/2V2YzaL
105 yrs ago #onthisday, just days before end of #WW1, French poet Apollinaire (weakened by a shrapnel wound) died in the Spanish flu epidemic. Later that year Calligrammes: Poems of Peace & War was published, a collection of his concrete/visual poems https://buff.ly/2FqFjeP
#OnThisDay in 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen discovered x-rays and altered the course of medical history. Pictured: images from one of the 1st series of x-rays ever produced (just 2 weeks after Roentgen published his discovery). More here: https://buff.ly/3mUfQ0Y#WorldRadiographyDay
Happy #JellyfishDay! The oceans are increasingly full of these gelatinous invertebrates, provoking a range of responses in humans, from disgust to awe. The biologist and artist Ernst Haeckel was most certainly in the latter camp... https://buff.ly/3q2G03j
Today Mexico celebrates the #DayOfTheDead. Skeletal imagery features heavily, influenced in no small part by the work of José Guadalupe Posada, known for his satirical and politically acute broadside prints called "calaveras" (skulls) — https://buff.ly/2tua8tS
“The November Meteors”, from The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings, 1882.
More of Étienne Léopold Trouvelot's wonderful images here: https://buff.ly/2ENtY5g; and if you fancy some on your walls check out the Trouvelot prints in our shop here: https://buff.ly/2t0nVrg
“November” from Labours of the Months section of the Très Riches Heures, one of the most important illuminated manuscripts of the 15th century. A rather majestic farmer is shown presiding over his sounder of swine feeding from the autumn acorns https://buff.ly/2Y0Nx2U
Navaho Legends (1897), a book from the American Folk-Lore Society compiling Navaho myths and legends and including a lengthy introduction on the history, beliefs and customs of the Navaho people: https://buff.ly/3FyKC6P
Made by eight different Japanese printmakers, the prints from One Hundred Views of New Tokyo (1928–1932) show a city rising from the ashes of the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923. They also show the artists, who were part of the sōsaku hanga (creative print) movement, attempting to consciously break with the classical ukiyo-e tradition which so dominated Japanese art through the 18th and 19th centuries: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/aftershock-of-the-new/
Not-for-profit project dedicated to exploring curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas — focusing on works now fallen into the public domain.Smaller posts surface images, books, audio, and film (sourced from places like Internet Archive, Library of Congress, The Met, Rijksmusuem, Wellcome, etc.) — and we've also 300+ long-form essays (✍️ submissions welcome!)Here we'll mostly be tooting about content on our site. ?