Tag: bookart

Vegetation of the Old and New Worlds

Tableau comparatif des altitudes de l’Ancien et du Nouveau Monde, Dessin de Goethe dédié à Humboldt. Source: A. de Humboldt (1807) Essai… p. 134. Image courtesy of “Société des Lettres, sciences et arts ’La Haute-Auvergne’; Archives départementales du Cantal, 28 J, 1 Ai 186.”

Ann Buttimer, “Alexander von Humboldt’s Geography of Plants:Bridging Sciences and Humanities.”  Click on the image for a larger version.

turnbullrarebooks:

Finely engraved frontispiece to William Morris’s ‘News from nowhere’ (the Kelmscott Press edition), a work which combined his socialist utopian ideals with science fiction.

William Morris,

News from nowhere, or, An epoch of rest : being some chapters from a Utopian romance.

Hammersmith: Kelmscott Press, 1892, Alexander Turnbull Library, RPr KELM MORR 1892

Title: “The Half Hour Library of Travel, Nature and Science for young readers”
Shelfmark: “British Library HMNTS 10027.ee.”
Volume: 03
Page: 301
Place of Publishing: London
Date of Publishing: 1896
Publisher: James Nisbet & Co.
Issuance: monographic
Identifier: 001567835

Title: “The Angel of the Revolution: a tale of the coming Terror. … With illustrations by F. T. Janes”
Author: JONES, George Chetwynd Griffith – afterwards GRIFFITH (George Chetwynd)
Contributor: JANE, Frederick Thomas.
Shelfmark: “British Library HMNTS 012630.h.1.”
Page: 140
Place of Publishing: London
Date of Publishing: 1893
Publisher: Tower Publishing Co.
Issuance: monographic
Identifier: 001894767

eadfrith: Holkham Bible Picture Book – folio 2r; God the Creator with his architect’s compasses in a ring, surrounded by a colourful heaven. Angels above and hell-fire and the Hell Mouth below. Manuscript dated to 1327 – 1335 and made in England possibly London.

erikkwakkel:

Medieval pop-up book

This book was printed in 1482, when printing was just invented – by Johannes Gutenberg, c. 1455. It is remarkable what printers were able to do after two decades of experimenting with the new medium. As this image shows, they were able to produce a book that showed the movement of the moon with the help of cut-out “paper wheels”, which hovered in front of the page. You can just imagine how the printer who designed and produced this 3D page must have felt, over 550 years ago. What a thrill it must have been to produce one of the first pop-up books in the western world.

Glasgow, University Library, Sp.Coll. BD7-f.13 (incunabulum printed in Venice, 1482), taken from the library’s Flickr page.