PlummerZine

George Catlin’s incredibly intimate 1830s portraits of Native American Indians. Pt. 1.

George Catlin (1796 – 1872) was an American lawyer, painter, author, and traveler, who specialized in portraits of Native American Indians in the Old West. He also researched and documented their views on mouth breathing and wrote a book on the subject. Catlin went on a total of five trips out to document the Indians in the 1830s. On returning east in 1838, he assembled his huge collection of paintings along with the numerous Indian artifacts he’d gathered into what he […]... Read on > > >

Art & Design History Travel

The world’s first abstract painter was a Swedish mystic guided by spirits. Hilda af Klint wanted her work kept secret until 20 years after her death.

In 1944, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) died in Djursholm, Sweden, aged almost 82. Hilma stipulated in her will that her work, should be shown to no-one... Read on > > >

Art & Design Mystery

Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita. M. C. Escher, a rare gift of apples, the Nazis and the almost lost genius of his friend the teacher.

Early February 1944. Watergraafsmeer near Amsterdam. Nazi occupied Holland. Today Escher has travelled 30 kilometres from his home in Baarn to to see the De Mesquita family of... Read on > > >

Mary Emily Eaton & the 4 volume desert epic “The Cactaceae”.

Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Suspendisse euismod dui eget ipsum euismod vehicula. Mauris fringilla, diam ac vestibulum placerat, velit quam... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature

William Saville-Kent.

Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Suspendisse euismod dui eget ipsum euismod vehicula. Mauris fringilla, diam ac vestibulum placerat, velit quam... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

Baron Louis Marie Baptiste Atthalin. His “Cartes Comiques” & the true fairytale of a fishermans daughter who became a Baroness in 1836.

Baron Louis Marie Baptiste Atthalin (22 June 1784 – 3 September 1856) is all but forgotten today. In mid 19th century France he was an incredible phenomenon. A dashing, aristocratic polymath, Atthalin combined being an accomplished artist, watercolourist and lithographer with a long distiguished military and political career. He began his soldiering at 22, fighting in campaigns with Napoleon’s Grande Armée in 1806 and 1807, bravely distinguishing himself at the battle of Eylau and the seige of Grandentz. Battle after battle followed […]... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

Life & Art.

Same thing, right?

“If the origin of my work is scandalous, it is because for me, the world is a scandal.” It’s 1933, Hitler has just come to power & a man named Hans Bellmer begins his surreal experiment with dolls. He never stopped.

Contains adult content. The first doll Hans Bellmer produced is long since lost. It’s assemblage can nevertheless be correctly described thanks to approximately two dozen photographs Bellmer took at the time of its... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

The unscientific exotic bird man of Dordrecht. Aert Schouman, 1710 – 1792.

Ridiculously prolific & versatile, the 18th-century Dutch Republic painter from Dordrecht, Aert Schouman (4 March 1710 – 5 July 1792) was a glass engraver, printmaker, art teacher & collector/dealer. He did it all;... Read on > > >

“The cold, not cruelty makes her weare Fur in Winter and Wild beast’s haire. For smoother skin at night embraceth her with more light.” The Chech artist Wenceslaus Hollar & his etchings of 17th C. seasonal fashion & accessory collections for London ladies.

Hollar’s portraits of 17th century fashionistas & still lifes of their acoutrements showcase that even three centuries ago some people could never have too many accessories. Part of the reason Hollar chose to... Read on > > >

Time travel tourism.

You can still go there.

PHOTOCHROM GUIDE TO : Switzerland & the Alps, 1890-1905.

These Photochrome images of Switzerland are by Photocrome Zurich, made shortly after they invented the process in the 1880s. There were 3 variations of the Photocrome processes at the time; Fotochrom, & Aäc Photocrome & the original, PhotoChrome. The Photocrome process was an old school process for colourizing black-and-white negatives via the direct photographic transfer of a negative onto lo-fi lithographic printing plates made of stobe. The process is a photographic variant of chromolithography (color lithography). Creatively choosing... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

The photographer Thomas Andrew. It’s a good thing his New Zealand studio burnt to the ground. In the early 1880s he packed up & went to Samoa.

The photographer Thomas Andrew once had a thriving studio in on the corner of Karangahape Road and Pitt St. in Auckland, New Zealand. In the early... Read on > > >

Obscurity Travel

Ebenezer Henderson’s Journal of an Icelandic Residence. 1814-1815

CONTAINING: OBSERVATIONS ON THE NATURAL PHENOMENA, HISTORY, LITERATURE, AND ANTIQUITIES OF THE ISLAND ; AN THE RELIGION, CHARACTER, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS OF ITS INHABITANTS. “At vero... Read on > > >

Russia 1912. Peasants in their finery.

... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

An Englishman, an American & their Picturesque 1870s road trip through Palestine, Sinai, and Egypt.

During the winters of 1877–78 and 1878–79, the New York publishing house of D. Appleton & Co. sent 2 illustrators to tour Egypt and the Levant area to produce sketches... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

Been there, seen it.

Antoon Molkenboer (1872-1960).

Antoon’s mother had fourteen children. Of the ten that didn’t die early, he would be the one that shone. Recently 2 or 3 of his childhood drawings appeared in the Netherlands. These clarify... Read on > > >

The alien U.S. landscapes of Henry “Yellowstone” Moran.

Irrespective of him being one of the greatest interpreters of the American landscape, England should claim Thomas Moran (1837-1926). He was born there, in Bolton, Lancashire. He came to the states as a... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature

“The hungry lion throws itself on the antelope, devours him. . . Birds of prey have each torn a strip of flesh from the poor animal that is shedding a tear! The sun sets.” Henri Rousseau.

The French poet Apollinaire once described how his friend Rousseau would quite genuinely become frightened by his own creations. He would tremble and rush away from his easel to open a studio window.... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature

AMERICAN BUCOLIC. The mass colour explosion & fantasy popular landscape painting boom of the 1800s.

We think of the 19th century as a dusty, monochrome environment, where solemn people stand still for photos, in grey spaces, dressed in shades of grey. It wasn’t. The century, especially the last part of it, was psychedelic with colour. New technology mades a difference to peoples lives. One huge, visible change it supplied to every American in the 19th century, was colour. Colour began to materialise everywhere; on the boxes of farm produce and cigars, on the covers of […]... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

History, mythology, Orientalism, portraiture, Jean-Léon Gérôme’s paintings had it all, & importantly many had a not so subtle dash of rampant sexuality thrown in. His glossy fantasy world was endlessly reproduced. No wonder Jean-Léon Gérôme was “arguably the world’s most famous living artist by 1880.”

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824 – 1904) knew the power of a nude. It is, of course, blatantly obvious that sexuality played a huge role in his success. His imagery is... Read on > > >

They don’t get more obscure or rare than L. Lu Vonago of Krasnoyarsk, a small town in the Russian Republic of Khakassia. His entire known output consists of just 23 pictures. He shot 2 hotel fires and one monomictic Lake resort in the early 1900s.

We don’t know who he or she was. We just have photographs, just a handful, in one of the collections held at the Krasnoyarsk Krai Museum of Regional... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity Travel

Hercules Seghers. Dutch Golden Age Progressive.

Seghers was one of the most unusual artists to emerge from the Dutch Golden Age, a time that began with the birth of the Dutch Republic in 1561... Read on > > >

Félix Edouard Vallotton.

The ridiculously prolific and multi-skilled Swiss artist Félix Edouard Vallotton was born into a conservative middle-class family in Lausanne. By the end of his life, he’d amassed a... Read on > > >

The muses of George Hendrik Breitner.

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Art & Design Obscurity

Previous offenses.

Strange bite-sized chunks of retro criminality plucked from the past for your perusal.

P. D. Kiniry, masked cop killer & mummy’s boy.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed egestas augue ut sapien venenatis, nec vulputate quam mattis. Nunc a urna tempus, placerat nibh ut, vehicula lectus. Nulla mattis, enim eget ullamcorper congue,... Read on > > >

Pauline Lyons. “Best dressed negress in Oakland”, femme fatale firestarter & jewel thief.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed egestas augue ut sapien venenatis, nec vulputate quam mattis. Nunc a urna tempus, placerat nibh ut, vehicula lectus. Nulla mattis, enim eget ullamcorper congue,... Read on > > >

Dope fiends busted. 1950s narcotics crime photography from the archives of L.A. Enquirer.

Abraham Hendriksz van Beijeren. It’s both magical to remember & easy to forget that the objects that glisten there now, once glistened in the gloom of his studio almost four hundred years ago; his fruit and his fish, fresh for eternity; his silver shining forever in the darkness.

Abraham Hendriksz van Beijeren or Abraham van Beyeren was born in The Hague somewhere around 1620. He died in March 1690 in Overschie, Rotterdam. During his 70 years he was little known or recognised for his dark, Baroque still lifes. Van Beyeren specialised in an ornate style of still life known as Pronkstilleven, (Dutch for ‘ostentatious’, ‘ornate’ or ‘sumptuous’). This sumptuous style (and it is so very sumptuous) began life in Antwerp in the 1640s from where its ostentatiousness spread rapidly all […]... Read on > > >

The modern art of Brasilia Congresso Nacional – highlights of the Brazilian Senate’s art collection – 60s & 70s.

The city planner Lúcio Costa laid out Brazilia like an abstract bird. Costa gave the palace of National Congress (Congresso Nacional) building pride of place at the head... Read on > > >

Original Outsider artist, Adolf Wölfli, (or St. Adolf II as he called himself in his 25,000 page psychiatric ward art, words & music epic) liked to play his art on a paper trumpet.

Adolf Wölfli, born in Bowil (Switzerland) in 1894, had a rough childhood : his father, a stone sculptor who drank away all of his paycheques, abandoned his family in... Read on > > >

Variations on a theme : Ganzen spel, Goose board or “The game of the geese.” The 16th century game you’ve likely played and the City of Cheese that made it theirs.

The “Game of the Goose” or “Goose game” is a board game where two or more players move pieces around a track by rolling a die or two dice. The track often seems to be a... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

Henry Salt’s “Voyage to Abyssinia, and travels into the interior of that country, executed under the orders of the British government in the years 1809 and 1810.”

Henry Salt (1780 – 1827) was one of the most important figures in early 19th century travel, archaeology and foreign diplomacy. Celebrated for his expeditions to Abyssinia, Salt later... Read on > > >

Bomb damage maps of London 1939-44.

Guide: black=total destruction, purple=damaged beyond repair, dark red=seriously damaged (doubt if repairable), light red=seriously damaged (repairable at cost), orange=general blast damage (non-structural), yellow=blast damage (minor), green=clearance area. Consectetur dolorem eos ut maiores et. Et vel occaecati explicabo iusto. Dolores corrupti quas accusamus fugit. Est asperiores minima aut nam aliquam aut aliquam.Eius quia praesentium impedit illo. Ut at laboriosam quia tempora quia. Optio maxime praes Officia minus et. Porro ex numquam reiciendis et quia enim autem sequi. Accusantium rerum […]... Read on > > >

Nudes of the 1800s.

Lovis Corinth died in 1925. The Nazi’s declared his work degenerate and put it on display as a bad example in 1936.

Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) was a German artist and writer whose whose work fused impressionism & expressionism into a brutal concoction all his own. His nudes expose his style perfectly. They’re not pretty, they are... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

Jules Joseph Lefebvre (French, 1836–1911). He’s remembered as an excellent teacher, but why not for his nudes?

Jules Joseph Lefebvre was a French figure painter, educator and theorist. Winner of the coveted Prix de Rome in 1861, Lefebvre fulfilled his early promise both as a painter of meticulously executed portraits... Read on > > >

Luis Ricardo Falero (Spanish 1851-1896), The fake Duke of Labranzano, painter of nudes, reprobate seducer & pin-up art pioneer. With a hint of opium.

Luis Ricardo Fallero painted nudes and not a lot else. Like an early Hugh Hefner in prototype, his world revolved around nudes. He did however, also have a strong side interest in astronomy;... Read on > > >

Undersung & died young: Mikuláš Galanda (1895-1938) of Slovakia. A simple poet of line, colour and (female) form.

Nothing to see here. No scandal, no crazy artist-dies-in-rags-after-throwing-it-all-away. The short bitter sweet story of Mikuláš Galanda (1895-1938) is one of honesty. In his short life Galanda did more than enoght to become one of Slovak modern art’s most important pioneers and propagators. He was a painter, an illustrator & a visual poet. Nothing in his short life story is remarkable. Except of course his work. Especially the work he created soprolifically just before the end of his life. Perhaps […]... Read on > > >

PHOTOCHROM GUIDE TO : American Indians. c. 1890.

Invented 140 years ago in 1880s Zurich, Photochrom, a.k.a. Fotochrom, Photochrome or Aäc process, is an old school process for colourizing black-and-white negatives via the direct photographic transfer of... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

Reijer Stolk.

Landscapes of lightness.

“Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature

Variations on a theme : The Great Old Town Hall fire of 7 July 1852.

Dam Square, Amsterdam, Netherlands at 8.30 p.m on Sunday, 7th July 1652. The Old Town Hall is ablaze and the place will burn for 24 hours until Monday... Read on > > >

Art & Design History

The worlds martyrs, captured by Jan Luyken the etcher of death.

Burnings at the stake, beheadings. shootings, impalings, hangings.... Read on > > >

Sketchy people.

Issac Israels.

“Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim... Read on > > >

David Park.

“Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim... Read on > > >

Rik Wouters.

“Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim... Read on > > >

John Martin’s sister was murdered by a neighbour, one brother was a “perfectly cracked” eccentric philosopher/inventor & the other an insane religious firestarter. Perhaps it’s no surprise John became the ultimate harbinger of The Apocolypse.

John Martin painted various apocolypses. Over and over and over. He was an Apocolyptian painter. Perhaps, it was a kind of escapism. It makes a kind of sense; a man born in a claustrophobic one bedroom cottage in Northumberland, England, who grew up to paint vast open expanses. It could be the other way around. He felt safe when closed in, safe from the hell of a threatening world outside. The source of calamity however most likely eminated from blood. […]... Read on > > >

Art & Design Crime

Painting self portraits of grief. The desparately short life of Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz, the first internationally known female artist from Poland.

Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz was the first internationally known female artist from Polish. An established portrait artist in Paris, her work was presented at the most prestigious European exhibitions, she... Read on > > >

Copper & Steel in Utah. Two epic & obscure early photo stories by Andreas Feininger for the U.S. Office of War Information, 1942.

1. Utah Copper Company at Bingham Canyon, Utah. Andreas Feininger, 1 November 1942. . . 2. Columbia Steel Company, Geneva, Utah. Andreas Feininger, January 1 1942.... Read on > > >

Art & Design History

Inside the Space Cathedral. Cape Canaveral, Florida inside & out by the Historic American Engineering Record program. Late 1960s.

“We’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.” Neil Armstong.... Read on > > >

Dr, John Murray’s exceedingly negative views on India were very welcome in the mid-1800s.

Although trained as a medical doctor specialising in Cholera, Dr. John Murray excelled as a photographer. The Scottish-born doctor was introduced to photography around 1849, while in the... Read on > > >

Torching vehicles for victory. In 1942, Marjory Collins, one of the first female photojournalists was doing her bit for the war effort.

Art & life.

Strawberries & cream.

The forgotten fish oils of Gerrit Willem Dijsselhof.

Gerrit Willem Dijsselhof (1866 – 1924), was a Dutch painter heavily involved in the arts and crafts movement. Born in Zwollerkerspel, Dijsselhof studied first at the art academy in The Hague, then moved... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature

World trapped in glass discovered decaying in remote Romanian cowshed. The haunting lost & now found archives of photographer Costică Acsinte & his village studio, Foto Splendid Slobozia.

Somewhere in the early 2000s, the Ialomita County Museum, a small regional museum in a small Romanian regional town was handed an authentic Pandora’s Box by a curious member of the Acsinte family.... Read on > > >

Art & Design History

The bird whisperer Louis Agassiz Fuertes, who killed the birds he madly loved & the rare fruits of his final bloody jaunt to Abyssinia.

It’s said that the artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes loved birds before he loved painting. He was certainly demonstrably crazy about them. Dr. Frank M. Chapman, eminent ornothologist, Senior Curator of Mammals & Birds... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature Travel

Self professed “creator of the pin-up” & he man who supplied Paris with Art Deco eye candy in the wake of WW1 – Jean-Gabriel Domergue also painted fabulous nudes.

The French painter, Jean-Gabriel Domergue wasn’t simply, as he claims “the creator of the pin-up.” As well as redefining the look and attitude of a new, liberated “la belle Parisienne”, in the aftermath... Read on > > >

1858. Johannes Toorop, a 9 year old Javanese boy is sent by his parents to a school in Holland. 7,000 miles away. Maybe that’s why his work was so extraordinarily eclectic.

He was born, the third of five children, 150 years ago in Purworejo, a place half way along the long thin island of Java in the Dutch East Indies. His parents, Christoffel and... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

Augustus Leopold Egg’s 1858 “Past & Present” triptych. A melodramatic, moralizing Victorian masterpiece made to illustrate the dire consequences of adultery.

Augustus Leopold Egg RA (1816 – 1863), was a Victorian artist best known for one thing. An incredible symbol-laden, epic triptych called Past and Present (1858), which chronicled the disintegration of a middle-class... Read on > > >

The mystery of The Unidentified Artist Formerly Known As William Etty. Is he actually Quiller Orchardson? Examine their nudes carefully & decide for yourself.

These life studies were once thought, by the Royal Academy where they are held, to be the work of the great William Etty. But there’s a problem. Etty died in 1949 and one... Read on > > >

Art & Design Mystery

Heinrich Caesar Berann, the painter who made maps mindblowing. One map took him a decade to paint.

“There’s just something absolutely magical about his panoramas,” said Tom Patterson, a senior cartographer with the U.S. National Park Service. To say Heinrich Caesar Berann (1915-1999) made maps is a bit like saying Muhammed... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

All Hail Satan! A French foodie and an Italian Art Nouveau artist collaborate to bring us an unlikely artistic tour de force. Orazi Manuel’s Calendrier magique of 1896.

The obscure art nouveau illustrator, Emmanuel Joseph Raphaël Orazi, known as Manuel Orazi, was probably born in Rome in 1860 and died in Paris in 1934. Information on Orazi is scant. Yet another “very... Read on > > >

Armchair tourism.

Friedrich Paul Theodor Sarre, abandoned mosque raider & jihad negotiator.

Monuments of Persian architecture: historical study and recording of Muslim brick buildings in Asia Minor and Persia by Friedrich Paul Theodor Sarre. Sarre was a German Orientalist, archaeologist and art historian who, during amassed an impressive collection of Islamic art during his lifetime. His father was from a Huguenot family, his mother from the Heckmann industrialist family. Sarre studied art history in Leipzig. He travelled for archaeological research thanks to his aunt Elise Wentzel-Heckmann (1833-1914) to Anatolia, Persia and Central Asia, specializing in Islamic art. Together with Ernst Herzfeld (1879-1948) he excavated […]... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity Travel

Introducing Mr. Josephus Augustus Knip. His life was a complicated saga pre-destined for total darkness. His one year in Italy however, was uniquely splendid in its lightness.

Artistic blood flows pure and fast in the Knip veins. Born into creativity in Tilburg, the Netherlands in 1877, Josephus Augustus Knip was the son of a decorative... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

Johan Conrad Greive.

“Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature

Antiquity manifest : Laurens Alma Tadema.

Laurens Alma Tadema (1836-1912) was the son of a public notary in the village of Dronrijp in Friesland. At sixteen he enrolled at the art academy in Antwerp.... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

A Series of Eight Views Forming a Panorama of the Celebrated City of Constantinople and its Environs, Taken from the Town of Galata, by Henry Aston Barker. 1813.

For 18th-century Britons, Constantinople, now Istanbul, was perceived as a city of charm, exoticism and historical pedigree. In 1798, British interest in the city increased dramatically when the... Read on > > >

Previous offenses.

Strange bite-sized chunks of retro criminality plucked from the past for your perusal.

Outraged. The 1896 murder of Helen Thomson. Markinch, Fife, Scotland.

Crime Mystery Obscurity

“Dancing Moses” McLain, William Bradley, H.B. Busby, a dogs tail, and the unsolved slaying of Tenderloin Eva de la Craye.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis imperdiet fermentum augue, sit amet efficitur sapien feugiat id. Proin finibus nibh nec tortor vehicula ullamcorper. Suspendisse tempor sem sed urna blandit, ac scelerisque... Read on > > >

Frank Belew. “…he moved softly among the mourners, as if he suffered deeply. In spite of this fact there was an almost unanimous feeling that he had committed the deed.”

Californians were no strangers to death by shooting in the late 1800s. The gunmen and their victims were mostly men. The events that unfolded at the Belew household in Dixon in November 1897... Read on > > >

PHOTOCHROM GUIDE TO : The seaside resort of Blankenberghe in Belgium. c. 1890.

Invented 140 years ago in 1880s Zurich, Photochrom, a.k.a. Fotochrom, Photochrome or Aäc process, is an old school process for colourizing black-and-white negatives via the direct photographic transfer of a negative onto lithographic printing plates. The process is a photographic variant of chromolithography (color lithography). Creatively choosing colour & then using a mechanical process to apply that colour to a black & white photo rather than doing it by hand. Colouring-in a monotone world. The printer is the Detroit Publishing Co. […]... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

Der Wahre Jacob. The satirical magazine that defied Hitler. Part 1.

Satirical journal Der Wahre Jacob was founded in 1879 in Hamburg with the aim of fighting the monarchy and mammonism. It was run by Social Democrats. The first 12... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

Henri Mayer for Le Sifflet.

At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint occaecati cupiditate non... Read on > > >

The glorious avant-garde degeneracy of Jugend magazine before the Nazis made it “pure”. Part 1, 1897-1904

Jugendstil, the German Art Nouveau movement, was named after a hedonistic literary and arts magazine called Jugenda. The Jugendstil movement embraced all areas of the arts from graphic design and... Read on > > >

“You do not know the curse of the creative one who wants to be all-powerful, who needs a thousand lives! And carries one weak body to the grave”. Wenzel Hablik.

At the age of 6, Wenzel Hablika stared deeply into a crystal he’d found in his hometown of Brüx in Czechoslaovakia. The toddler Wendel saw “magical castles and... Read on > > >

The Ver Sacrum calendar of 1903.

... Read on > > >

Miscellaneous. A pot pourri of pearls purloined from the past.

Random bite-sized chunks of extreme retro-ness plucked from the time's dust and polished for your perusal.

While Van Gogh was painting Paris, Pavel Mikhailovich Kosharov was transcribing the the dark heart of Siberia.

For almost a hundred years they were unknown to people. In Tomsk, Siberia, Galina Kolosova, the lady in charge of the Department of Rare Books in the city’s Research library discovered, among some... Read on > > >

Art & Design History Travel

O.M.G. Variations on a theme : God crazy young girls hugging crosses.

No words. Just girls hugging crosses. A couple of crosses without anyone hugging them. Singles looking for love.... Read on > > >

Almquist & Cöster’s squeaky clean, fluorescent vision of late 1950s Sweden.

The Swedish National Heritage Board holds in its archives a large collection of photo postcards from the Almquist & Cöster Company, operative from the 1920s until 1968 they were one of Swedens major... Read on > > >

Remote fragments from the void.

Scattered elements. What stories lie in the gaps between? You fill in the blanks.

The lost world of Sergei Ivanovich Borisov’s turn of the century Southern Siberian Retro Kitch Postcard. Circa 1907.

This collection of strange & slightly unnerving early 20th century colour(ed) postcards made by photographer Sergei Ivanovich Borisov (1859-1935) in the Altai Mountains region of southern Siberia early in the 20th century. Borisov was born into a family of serfs in Simbirsk (present-day Ulyanovsk) and forced to work as a child. In the late 1880s he moved to the city of Barnaul in Altayskiy Kray, where in 1894 he opened a photography studio. This studio later became the largest and […]... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature

Treacherous rapids and remote shamanic Siberian tribes. Photography from the Russian explorer I.G. Ivanov’s 1913 Land Management Expeditions into the remote Gornaia Shoria mountain region.

During 1913, an obscure Russian explorer named I.G. Ivanov (1826-1929) undertook two gruelling topographical expeditions into southern Siberia, one to the Gornaia Shoria in the Altai region and... Read on > > >

Found. Early photographs of an extraordinary time in a remote place. Leaf through the scrapbook of soviet-era Berdsk, central Russia.

Berdsk sits in the centre of Russia on the left bank of the Berdsk gulf, a wide flooded valley of the Berd River. Berd river. Berdsk town. Founded... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature

In 1891, the 27 year old future Tsar Nikolai II ordered a school to be built in a wooden town without one in the middle of nowhere in Russia’s Far East. Have a look around.

Preserved in the National Library of Russia is a 1898 album detailing the history of a school in the province of Zabaykalsky Krai, the country’s Far East. It’s... Read on > > >

History Obscurity

Samuel Bourne. “In the Himalayas he once worked for days in sub-zero temperatures to get just four negatives.”

“Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature

Kamchatka. The Land of Fire & Ice. Ivan Emelianovich Larin, 1890-1980.

If you go to the very outer edge of nowhere, turn right and keep walking you may eventually get to Kamchatka. The indigenous Koryaks, call it “The Land of Fire and Ice” It’s a 777 mile long peninsular jutting out of the farthest end of far eastern Russia. rctic winds from Siberia combine with the coldest current the Sea of Japan can muster to cover the place in snow for 8 months a year. From October through to late May. […]... Read on > > >

Art & Design History Travel

Bodies of work.

2 almost forgotten artists models & one not much not so. Peruse a muse.

Florence Wysinger Allen (1913-1977). “San Francisco’s best loved artists’ model”.

At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint occaecati cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa qui... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

Oh, Evelyn.

At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint occaecati cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa qui... Read on > > >

Art & Design History

The best nudes from 1971’s “The Newd Cookbook” by artist’s model Cleo Dorman.

At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint occaecati cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa qui... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

1910s - 1920s Russia. Three artists, one disappearing Siberian culture.

The Siberian art expeditions to the Sel’Kupy tribes in the 1910s & 20s. The sketchbooks, watercolours & oils of Andrei Prokof’evich Lekarenko.

Andrei Prokofievich Lekarenko (1895-1974) is one of three well-known Krasnoiarsk artists, (the other 2 being Dmitri Innokent’evich Karatanov & A. G. Vargin) who undertook several expeditions into Siberia during the 1910s and 1920s.... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature

The Siberian art expeditions to the Sel’Kupy tribes in the 1910s & 20s. The sketchbooks & watercolours of A. G. Vargin.

Next to nothing is known about the artist A. G. Vargin. What we do have goes like this; three well-known Krasnoiarsk artists, Dmitri Innokent’evich Karatanov, Andrei Prokofievich Lekarenko and our man A. G.... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature

The Siberian art expeditions to the Sel’Kupy tribes in the 1910s & 20s. The sketchbooks & watercolours of Dmitriĭ Innokentʹevich Karatanov.

Dmitriĭ Innokentʹevich Karatanov (1874-1952) studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts but left the Academy in 1896 before finishing his course of study to return to Krasnoiarsk. He began teaching at... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature

The nationwide US government survey of buildings that captured so much more.

"Photographers unknown" give us a wonderfully randomised & totally unique scattergun view of the United States. Anonymous deserves some belated kudos.

Inadvertent genius. Historic American Buildings Survey of Sacramento Cal. 1964-5. By anonymous city employee.

“Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

Inadvertent genius. Pima, Tucson & Tombstone, Arizona all get the Historic American Buildings Survey treatment in the ’30s & ’60s.

Art & Design Travel

Inadvertent genius. Random 1970s & 1950s Georgia by photographically unknown people from the Historical American Buildings Survey.

Art & Design Travel

Inadvertent genius. The Historic American Buildings Survey do their thing in the sleepy Virgin Islands c. 1950.

.... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

Inadvertent genius. The Historic American Buildings Survey randomly document Deer Lodge, Madison, Powell, Ravalli, Cascade and Park Counties in Montana.

.... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

Design.

A man, a goat & a very dark beer.

If you were from Bavaria, as many American immigrants were in the mid 1800s, it wouldn’t be at all strange if when you thought of goats you thought of beer. And vice versa. ... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

In the 1930s-40s, Lester Beall was bringing Euro avant-garde, Dada, Bauhaus and progressive lo-fi aesthetics to the US Government’s Electricity, Housing & War propaganda.

Shortly after Lester Thomas Beall (1903-1969) was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1903, his family relocated to St. Louis before settling in Chicago. Beall grew up playing with ham radios and creating... Read on > > >

Less is underrated & just a little can mean a lot more in the hands of a master. The understated power of the Swiss painter Niklaus Stoecklin.

An early exponent of the Neue Sachlichkeit, “New Objectivity” movement, the Swiss painter Niklaus Stoecklin (1896–1982) was interested in what the figure, inanimate objects (still life), and landscapes could to to help him... Read on > > >

Johannes Josephus Artes. Parts 1, & 2.

Johannes Josephus Aarts. Part 1A ; Salt of the Dutch earth. Etchings & engravings.

Whilst it may seem a trifle unempathetic to round up a human life, to precis an existence down to just the sum parts of interest to us, it must be done, selfishly in this case in order to get to the images, the art more swiftly. Arguably an artist’s work is the raison d’etre. Show don’t tell then, but tell a little, we must. A Dutch printmaker and painter, Johannes Josephus Aarts (18 August 1871 -119 October 1934) trained at […]... Read on > > >

Johannes Josephus Aarts. Part 2A : Monsters, myth & visions of the apocolypse..

In Arte’s output there are two broad stages/areas of subject matter, in the first (covered in Part 1) he dwelt on everyday scenes of ordinary rural working people;... Read on > > >

Johannes Josephus Aarts. Part 1B : Salt of the Dutch eart. Woodcuts.

Throughout both (what I’ve called Parts 1 & 2) periods where his subject matter began with the Dutch farmworkers, dyke workers etc. & moved to a time around... Read on > > >

Johannes Josephus Aarts. Part 2B : Monsters, myth & visions of the apocolypse. Woodcuts.

Obscuriousities.

Plucked quickly from within the fog of time for you to scroll thru' slowly :

Romancing Ruins. Bartholomeous Breenburgh and his strange vision of Rome.

Bartholomeus Breenbergh (before 13 November 1598 – after 3 October 1657) was a Dutch Golden Age painter of Italian and Italianate landscapes, in Rome (1619-1630) and Amsterdam (1630-1657).... Read on > > >

Art & Design Mystery Travel

John Singer Sargeant totally owns the Swiss Alps at just 14 years old in “The Splendid Mountain Sketchbook.”

The “Splendid Mountain Sketchbook” is a collection of watercolours & sketches that John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) produced, in 1870 whilst on a summer excursion to Switzerland’s Bernese Alps in the Berner Oberland. The sketchbook contains 60... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature Travel Uncategorized

Achille Lemot learns the exact price of a mistress in 1870s Paris.

Court of Assizes of the Seine. Paris, Monday June 26, 1874. A young man and a young woman arrive to sit before President Louis Claude Douët d’Arcq on the “bench of infamy”. A... Read on > > >

Art & Design Crime

Marshall Howard Saville & his turquois mask compilation.

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Art & Design Obscurity

“J.J.” Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard Grandville & “Un Autre Monde”.

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Art & Design Obscurity

Carl Bovallius.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, sale tantas pericula in ius. Vix dolor legere ad, ne quo prompta offendit epicurei, ad vel cibo recteque. Qui no iusto dicunt luptatum. Et iriure denique vix, et... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

Transparent fakery. The spirit photographs of William Hope found in a Lancashire second-hand shop. Would you beleive it?

“The case of William Hope and his Crewe Circle deserves to be remembered today because it shows that it is practically impossible (and futile) to try to convince someone who wants to believe even in the face of quite convincing contrary evidence.” Massimo Polidoro. Photos of Ghosts: The burden of Beleiving the Unbeleivable. 2011. These photographs of ‘spirits’ are taken from an album of photographs discovered by chance in a Lancashire second-hand and antiquarian bookshop by a curator from the […]... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

Utagawa. The Plum Garden at Kameido Shrine.

“Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae... Read on > > >

See the street photography that helped put social realism into George Hendrik Breitner’s Amsterdam streets.

For the Dutch painter and photographer George Hendrik Breitner (1857 – 1923), his interest in photography began as a practicacal means to capture street life in all its... Read on > > >

The 10 psychedelic stages of the “Plague of Egypt” by the Kaiserlich Franziskische Akademie of Holland.

Art & Design Travel

The surreal studies of Michael Snijders, Flemish, draughtsman, publisher & art dealer.

Snijders was born in Antwerp in 1586 & died there, aged 87 on December 18th 1672.... Read on > > >

Moloch.

... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

Art & design.

Treasure with the dust wiped off:

The eerie, yet everyday New York darkness of Australian Martin Lewis.

The Australian Martin Lewis is one of America’s greatest chroniclers of urban life. He came to possess a magical power – the ability to capture obscure light sources, the light within shadow, adverse weather... Read on > > >

The artist Tom Adams & Agatha Christie. The lost plot twist that no one saw coming: The Hawaiian Skimpy Bathing Dress Affair.

At 12 years old, I learned that you can indeed judge a book by its cover. A cover can magically change the way reading a book feels. My childhood family holidays were spent... Read on > > >

Itō Jakuchū. Greengrocer, Zen Buddhist koji & eccentric painter.

During the mid-Edo period of 1603-1867, Japan sealed itself off from the world outside and was ruled by a feudal military shogunate of samurai. The Tokugawa. The shoganate forged a stronghold over the... Read on > > >

Robert Riggs & his mysterious late work, Legends of the Lenape Indians..

“He lives in a museum – alone – and likes it. Keeps snakes as pets, is fanatically interested in primitive things and does all his creative work at night. He doesn’t make preliminary... Read on > > >

Niles Spencer the Precisionist. A lost figure on the fringe of a fringe art movement.

Niles Spencer & his work is often associated with The Precisionists, a loosely knit group including Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth, Louis Lozowick, George Ault, Elsie Driggs and Ralston Crawford. Precisionism pared down the... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

Frank Eugene, son of a German baker & a beer hall singer and his signature “unphotographic photography.”

Soon after moving to American the late 1850s, a German baker named Frederick Schmid very quickly changed his name to plain old Fred Smith. His wife, Hermine Selinger Smith, was a singer in... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

The strange contents of Frédéric’s mind exploded all over his most ambitious painting, All Things Die, But All Will Be Resurrected through God’s Love”. Psychedelic and apocolyptic, it was 30 feet long, consisted of seven panels & took 25 years to paint. It celebrated a loving god who took his young daughter while he painted it. Still he painted on.

Léon-Henri-Marie Frédéric (1856-1940) was born too late. Centuries too late for the 16th century Flemish school and Renaissance art of the 1400s he so admired. The mythical scenes of Botticelli with their creamy nude... Read on > > >

Only 35 photographs survive from the turn of the century, Californian world of hydroelectrician, irrigation and water supply expert & conservationist, Walter L. Huber.

In the archives of the University of California, there are 13 feet (30 boxes) of correspondence, reports, documents and data, relating to dams, hydroelectric power installations, irrigation works, and municipal water supply systems,... Read on > > >

Joseph B. Lippincott, the forgotten hero hydrographer who brought water from the desert to a thirsty Los Angeles in 1913 & took photos to show us how he did it.

In the beginning Los Angeles was dust, It emerged from the desert. To fully flower, the city would always need water to grow. Without Joseph Barlow Lippincott (1864-1942), engineer, topographer and hydrographer, Los... Read on > > >

Protest and dissent.

They were so beautiful when they were angry:

The surreal world of Lustige Blätter – Germany’s “Funny Leaves.”

... Read on > > >

The art of the New Masses.

... Read on > > >

Max Radler for Der Simpl.

... Read on > > >

Magic Lantern journal. Art from the original Russian Revolution of 1905. The pages are yellowing and brittle but the revolutionary fervour in the art they carry is still as raw, fresh and angry as the day they were printed.

Before the Russian Revolution(s) of 1917 there was another; the First Russian Revolution of 1905. Lenin later called it “The Great Dress Rehearsal,” without which the “victory of... Read on > > >

Art & Design History

Lewis Wicke Hines. Fake fire inspector, postcard salesman & bible vendor. Child Labor Law superhero and photographer in disguise.

Lewis Wicke Hine (1874 – 1940) was among the first to use a camera as a tool for social reform. In his hands it was a weapon for... Read on > > >

The Masses.

[…]... Read on > > >

Art & design.

Treasure with the dust wiped off:

Variations on a theme : Vesuvius.

Art & Design Nature

Charles Amédée de Noé, AKA “Cham”.

Proin dapibus augue eu diam dictum dignissim. Aliquam sit amet vestibulum magna, eu rutrum enim. Pellentesque maximus a erat volutpat mattis. Duis leo metus, rhoncus nec sodales eu, vestibulum et quam. Pellentesque ornare... Read on > > >

The Japanese Kacho-ga artist Watanabe Shōtei aka Watanabe Seitei 渡辺省亭, Japonisme & 2 birds on a branch at Burty’s 1878 dinner party in Paris.

Whilst these woodcut prints (below) by Seitei (after Bijutsu Sekai) seem surprisingly simple and contemporary, the artist’s background is complex and ancient. In 1851 when the artist now known as Watanabe Shōtei (AKA Watanabe... Read on > > >

Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel. Biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist, and the artist who gave us 1904’s “Art forms of Nature”.

Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Suspendisse euismod dui eget ipsum euismod vehicula. Mauris fringilla, diam ac vestibulum placerat, velit quam semper ex, eget suscipit nulla elit sed ex. In vestibulum risus mauris, sed molestie eros accumsan nec. Nulla at porta tellus, eget dignissim diam. Ut varius mi eu consequat interdum. Mauris in egestas nisi. Phasellus a mollis mauris, facilisis feugiat neque. Praesent et pharetra magna. Suspendisse convallis lorem sit... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

Studio International. English home sweet home 1904-1924.

... Read on > > >

The fruits of Enrico Bianchetti’s Necropolis. 1890.

Sometime in September of 1890, in a small Italian village called Ornavasso in the Piedmont region of Italy, a man called Enrico Bianchetti recieved news of something that would... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

The 1829 Polynesian Researches of William Ellis.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud... Read on > > >

PHOTOCHROM GUIDE TO : Dresden, Germany, c. 1890-1900.

These Photochrome images of Dresden by Photocrome of Zurich, were made shortly after the company invented the process in the 1880s. The Photocrome process was an... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

Brigadier General & photographer. Found in a photo album; the insane aftermath carnage of World War One captured by a Canadian insurance man.

William Okell Holden Dodds (1867-1934) was a Canadian Brigadier General in the First World War. A militia officer before WW1, Dodds was an army man through and through. He served with the Canadian Garrison Artillery, the Royal Scots of Canada, the Canadian Field Artillery, and the Canadian Grenadier Guards. In 1914 Dodds joined the Canadian Expediationary Force as Officer Commanding the 1st Battery of the Canadian Field Artillery. Dodds returned to civilian life in 1919 and worked in the... Read on > > >

Camera obscura.

Cutting and rickling reeds, shooting snipe and fishing for Pike, catching eels and quanting the marsh. The Norfolk Broads in the mid-1800s as seen thru’ the gentle lens of naturalist, photographer & ex-physician, Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936).

Peter Henry Emerson was born in Cuba and travelled to a remote, low lying marshland in England’s East Anglia. He came to know and love it with a passion. “As I stood admiring... Read on > > >

Tight corsets, outrageous bustles, picnics, hiking & tea. The Real Housewives of Camden, Maine : 1898-1900.

These rare and interesting vintage photographs by Charles Wilkes Babb (1863-1956) the treasurer at Knox Mill in Camden, Maine, present us with a rare, crystal clear window into the informal life and lifestyle... Read on > > >

“Visions, delirium and nightmares!” The truly epic fails of Herbert George Ponting (1870-1935), iconic photographer of the Antarctic and the first and only pioneer of “distortography”.

Herbert George Ponting (1870-1935) is best known expedition photographer and cinematographer for Robert Falcon Scott’s legendary Terra Nova Expedition to the Ross Sea and South Pole (1910–1913). In this role, he captured some of... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

Lost aesthetics.

Backdated & belatedly curated.

The stately Art Nouveau aesthetics of Jugendstil era Pan magazine. Part 1.

The most distinguished German arts journal of the Jugendstil period, Pan is celebrated for its typographic design and original graphic art. Founded by Otto Julius Bierbaum and Julius Meier-Graefe, Pan highlighted international developments in art, literature, theater, and music. ... Read on > > >

The persecuted priest Isidro Rafael Gondra and the first lithographic art made of Mexico.

... Read on > > >

PHOTOCHROM GUIDE TO : Spitsbergen, Norway, 1900.

Invented 140 years ago in 1880s Zurich, Photochrom, a.k.a. Fotochrom, Photochrome or Aäc process, is an old school process for colourizing black-and-white negatives via the direct photographic... Read on > > >

Edme-François Jomard

Nam Et Exercita Tempora laboriosam ut officiis et mollitia. Est dignissimos distinctio praesentium vitae voluptates numquam accusamus. Soluta blanditiis excepturi aspernatur perspiciatis non aut reiciendis.... Read on > > >

Deutscher Wille. Des Kintswarts or (in English), German will. The art warrior.

... Read on > > >

Felx Bonfils Middle Eastern Mix. From various albums.

“Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore... Read on > > >

Art & Design History Travel

Deep in the Smithsonian archives sits a box labelled "Miscellaneous Photographs circa 1845-1980". No one in their right mind would want to look through that.

Every one of the photographs is an artist. But what of the art behind the face? It’s a wild smargasbord platter of the obscure, forgotten, dubious and "little is known of".

Artist retreived from the Smithsonian “Miscellaneous Box” No.1 : Ibram Lassar.

It’s a wildly varied smargasbord platter. No one in their right mind would put it together. Deep in the Smithsonian archives there’s a box of photographs labelled “Miscellaneous photographs circa 1845-1980”. Around 150... Read on > > >

Artist retreived from the Smithsonian “Miscellaneous Box” No.2 : Randall Davey.

This photo itself is special. It was taken in Davey’s Santa Fe studio in early 1949 by “perhaps the single most important American photographer in the development of the editorial photo essay”. The... Read on > > >

Artist retreived from the Smithsonian “Miscellaneous Box” No. 3 : Walt Kuhn.

The next photograph out of the Smithsonian’s box of American art flotsom contains Walt Kuhn and Walt Kuhn is absolute gold. So. The art behind the face in another photo from the Miscellaneous... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

Nature aging beautifully.

Long dead organisms resurrected for your unscientific examination.

Sex, science & sumptuous flowers in Dr. Robert John Thornton’s 1807 epic, A New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus: The Temple of Flora.

Exotic flora from foreign climes, their genitalia turned provocatively, suggestively toward the viewer, Dr. Robert John Thornton’s romantic floral opus, A New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus; Part III, Temple... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature

H.M.S. Challenger. Images from the very 1st voyage to the bottom of the seas.

Long before cabled observatories were built to explore the ocean, HMS Challenger embarked on the world’s first global oceanographic expedition. Sponsored by the Royal Society of London, in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, the... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature Obscurity

Philip Henry Gosse & Actinologia britannica : a history of the British sea anemones and corals.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque ut dui dignissim justo fermentum consectetur non vel ligula. Nullam dignissim nisl ut sapien placerat, ut lacinia augue accumsan. Duis malesuada tristique velit in... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature

The Snakes that Hattie & Helena Scott drew in 1869.

Harriet (1830-1907) and Helena (1832-1910), artists and naturalists, were born in Sydney, Helena on 11 April 1832. Educated by their father on Ash Island, they acquired a considerable knowledge of Australian plants, animals... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature Obscurity

François Levaillant.

Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Suspendisse euismod dui eget ipsum euismod vehicula. Mauris fringilla, diam ac vestibulum placerat, velit quam semper ex, eget suscipit... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

Man vs. Barkbeetle, enemy of California Forests. 1919-1934.

These photographs & captions are from a hand-colored photo album called “Barkbeetle Enemies of California Forests”. The album was produced by the USDA Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine in cooperation with the... Read on > > >

Walter Hood Finch. Flora Antarctica, from the 1839–1843 Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus & Terror.

Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Suspendisse euismod dui eget ipsum euismod vehicula. Mauris fringilla, diam ac vestibulum placerat, velit quam semper ex, eget suscipit nulla... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

João Barbosa Rodrigues. Sertum Palmarum Brasiliensium.

Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Suspendisse euismod dui eget ipsum euismod vehicula. Mauris fringilla, diam ac vestibulum placerat, velit quam semper ex, eget suscipit nulla... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

1944’s “Ancient Courses Mississippi River Meander Belt” by cartographer Harold Fisk makes the Mississippi River move.

"Ancient Courses Mississippi River Meander Belt" is a series of maps created in 18944 by cartographer and geologist Harold Fisk for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Each map shows a different stretch... Read on > > >

Irrational Geographic.

Backdated & belatedly curated.

The bird whisperer Louis Agassiz Fuertes, who killed the birds he madly loved & the rare fruits of his final bloody jaunt to Abyssinia.

It’s said that the artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes loved birds before he loved painting. He was certainly demonstrably crazy about them. Dr. Frank M. Chapman, eminent ornothologist, Senior Curator of Mammals & Birds at the American Museum of Natural History & writer of field guides totally understood the mania of Fuertes. “That instinctive, inexplicable passion for birds which arouses an uncontrollable desire to know them intimately in their haunts and to make them part of our lives, and... Read on > > >

Art & Design Nature Travel

The fly swot Frederick Maurits van der Wulp (1818-1899). A man who spent a lifetime on an obsessively focussed worldwide quest to audit flies. Yup.

Frederik Maurits van der Wulp (1818-1899) was a Dutch entomologist & a civil service auditor in the Dutch Audit Office whose particular interest in insects was drawn towards... Read on > > >

EXOTIC BUCOLIC. Imagery from the mass colour explosion & fantasy popular landscape painting boom of the 1800s.

The advent of colour lithography in America allowed artists to bring colour, and colourful art to the 19th century American masses. It also meant artists could... Read on > > >

Art & Design Travel

The 10 psychedelic stages of the “Plague of Egypt” by the Kaiserlich Franziskische Akademie of Holland.

Art & Design Travel

The Right Rev. Erich Pontoppidan’s natural history of Norway : 1755.

The Danish-Norwegian, Right Rev.d, Erich Pontoppidan (1698 – 1764), was Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Copenhagen as well as an author & a Lutheran... Read on > > >

Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita. M. C. Escher, a rare gift of apples, the Nazis and the almost lost genius of his friend the teacher.

·8 min read

The glorious avant-garde degeneracy of Jugend magazine before the Nazis made it “pure”. Part 1, 1897-1904

·2 min read

The Liberator Covers 1918-1924.

·1 min read

Global Latest

Cutting and rickling reeds, shooting snipe and fishing for Pike, catching eels and quanting the marsh. The Norfolk Broads in the mid-1800s as seen thru’ the gentle lens of naturalist, photographer & ex-physician, Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936).

Peter Henry Emerson was born in Cuba and travelled to a remote,... Read on > > >

Dope fiends busted. 1950s narcotics crime photography from the archives of L.A. Enquirer.

Tight corsets, outrageous bustles, picnics, hiking & tea. The Real Housewives of Camden, Maine : 1898-1900.

These rare and interesting vintage photographs by Charles Wilkes Babb (1863-1956) the... Read on > > >

“Visions, delirium and nightmares!” The truly epic fails of Herbert George Ponting (1870-1935), iconic photographer of the Antarctic and the first and only pioneer of “distortography”.

Herbert George Ponting (1870-1935) is best known expedition photographer and cinematographer for Robert... Read on > > >

Art & Design Obscurity

A Late Middle Ages fashion show. The lost and found ten weepers from the tomb of Isabella of Bourbon c. 1475.

Isabella of Bourbon, wife of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy died,... Read on > > >

Art & Design History

1944’s “Ancient Courses Mississippi River Meander Belt” by cartographer Harold Fisk makes the Mississippi River move.

"Ancient Courses Mississippi River Meander Belt" is a series of maps created... Read on > > >

Man vs. Barkbeetle, enemy of California Forests. 1919-1934.

These photographs & captions are from a hand-colored photo album called “Barkbeetle... Read on > > >

Shaffrons.

The shaffron (also spelled chaffron, champion, chamfron, chamfrein, champron, and chanfron) was designed to protect a horse’s face. Sometimes they... Read on > > >

Art & Design History

1950s Tibet in hand-tinted technicolor & old school black and white. Courtesy of The Chinese People’s Liberation Army propaganda dept.

Selected 1950s imagery from two Chinese government (propaganda) pamphlets on Tibet, Xizang... Read on > > >

Art & Design History Travel

“Views of ancient monuments in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan,” 1844, by the East London architect, artist & original tomb raider, Frederick Catherwood.

One day in 1839, two explorers – an East Londoner, Frederick Catherwood, and... Read on > > >

Art & Design History Travel

Colour plates from 1820s India, “Views in the Himalaya Mountains,” by James Baillie Fraser.

In the early nineteenth century, British consumers increasingly demanded representations of foreign... Read on > > >

Art & Design History

“The art of illuminating as practised in Europe from the earliest times – illustrated by borders, initial letters, and alphabets”, 1860. 6th – 16th Century letterforms by the British architect Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt.

The extremely prolific English architect,Digby Wyatt was the younger brother of another,... Read on > > >

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Irrational Geographic.

Backdated & belatedly curated.

3 years in the life of a shadowy Dutch artist in a cloak and hat. The revealing 1800s visual diaries of Christiaan Andriessen. The Amsterdam Drawing Academy wouldn’t let him draw female nudes so he left to set up a studio at home.

Between 1805 and 1808, the Amsterdam artist Christiaan Andriessen kept a diary; a visual diary with over 700 drawings and watercolors depicting the the goings on in his life, with his friends, family and events in the city. Christiaan came from a family who encouraged his artistic pursuits; his father was the Dutch decorative painter, graphic artist and teacher, Jurriaan Andriessen (1742-1819). Jurriaan was also a meticulous diary keeper and the Rijksmuseum holds 20 years of his diaries. Perhaps... Read on > > >

Art & Design History

The state-of-the-art futurist design of the Finnish Suomen Yleisradio national radio station operation circa 1927-1956.

Yle is Finland’s national public broadcasting service. Suomen Yleisradio (Finland’s General Radio) was founded in Helsinki on 29 May 1926. By 1928 Yle’s broadcasts became available to the whole... Read on > > >

Art & Design History

Trains, trams, trucks, cars and rubberneckers. 1950-1960: the Dutch Golden Age of Road Wreckage. Crash scene photography from the archives of the Amsterdam Police.

Hubertus Salomon Hordijk, a former army captain known as “Steel Bart” spent a decade in the 1900s as Amsterdam’s autocratic Chief of Police. All that time he was taking photos.

Not the most likely canditate for artistic photographer, Hubertus Salomon Hordijk (1862-1930) kept his passion to himself for a decade. No-one was going to argue. He... Read on > > >

Art & Design History

150 years of fire in Amsterdam. 1720-1888.

Keizersgracht Theatre Fire of 11 May 1722. In 1664 it was decided that Amsterdam’s Van Campen was too small and out of date. It had to... Read on > > >

Art & Design History

Deeper in the rabbit hole:

Curiouser & curiouser? Come on down.

The art of the New Masses.

... Read on > > >

Russia 1912. Peasants in their finery.

Art & Design Travel

·1 min read

Paul “White” Hadol. Galois, Nouvelle carte d’Europe dressée pour 1870 & La Ménagerie Impériale.

·4 min read

Étienne Léopold Trouvelot. Part 2.

Painting the cosmos in 1892.

·2 min read

Shop coming soon.

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“The art of illuminating as practised in Europe from the earliest times – illustrated by borders, initial letters, and alphabets”, 1860. 6th – 16th Century letterforms by the British architect Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt.

“Mr. Gustave Moreau is an extraordinary artist, unique.” wrote the French author Huysmans, “He is a mystic locked up in the middle of Paris in a cell into which even the noise of everyday life that nevertheless beats furiously at the doors of the cloister does not penetrate. Thrown in ecstasy, he sees resplendent fairy-like visions, the apotheoses of other times.”

Colour plates from “Gems and precious stones of North America” (1890) & “History of the gems found in North Carolina” (1907) by George Frederick Kunz, (1856-1932).

Owl vs. Rabbit. Just one of many strange scenes from Eduard Hallberger’s bizarre, late 1800’s Illustrated World.