Vintage Thanksgiving Greeting Card, c.1870

7:49 PM
From Centrasian's wonderful Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/photos/centralasian/

The enigmatic canons of Juan del Vado

11:06 PM
A page from a musical score book of enigmatic canons by composer Juan del Vado (1626 - 1691), completed between 1677 and 1679 and given as a gift to Juan José de Austria, the brother of Charles II, for usage in his royal chapel. See/read more here: https://www.emblematica.com/blog/2010/02/enigmas-resueltos.html

Denis Diderot: Encyclopédie

10:09 PM
Published over the course of more than twenty years (1751-1777), the 32 volumes of the Encyclopédie include 21 volumes of text with more than 70,000 articles on subjects ranging from asparagus to the zodiac. The remaining 11 volumes contain beautifully engraved plates illustrating many of the articles. The Encyclopédie was the major achievement of the French Enlightenment whose aim, in Diderot's words, was to "change the common way of t…

Le sphere de monde: proprement dicte Cosmographie

2:31 PM
Oronce Fine's " Le sphere de monde: proprement dicte Cosmographie: manuscript" , 1549. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/18260773

Typografische monatsblätter, issue June-July 1968

9:28 PM
See a collection of spreads from the typographic journal, complied from various issues of the year 1968, on Sébastien Hayez's Flickr stream here >>>

Carl Jung's Red Book

4:39 PM
When Carl Jung embarked on the extended self-exploration he called his 'confrontation with the unconscious', the heart of it was "The Red Book", a large, illuminated volume he created between 1914 and 1930. Here he developed his principal theories - of the archetypes, the collective unconscious and the process of individuation - that transformed psychotherapy from a practice concerned with treatment of the sick into a means for…

Kris Kuksi

6:33 PM
"A postindustrial Rococo master, Kris Kuksi obsessively arranges characters and architecture with an exquisite sense of drama. Kuksi uses screaming plastic soldiers, miniature engine blocks, towering spires and assorted debris to form his land scapes. The political, spiritual, and material conflict within these shrines is enacted under the calm gaze of remote deities and august statuary. Kuksi manages to evoke, at once, a sanctum and a maus…

Baroque Violin Pattern

9:08 PM
Violin pattern attributed to a Cremonese workshop, 17th century. http://orgs.usd.edu/nmm/Violins/ViolinPattern/ViolinPattern.html

Zoomorphic Islamic Calligraphy

2:16 PM
The calligraphic art of Hassan Musa from Sudan, re-blogged from Biblio-Odyssey .

Historic Chinese Cats

12:38 AM
Emperor Xuangdong, Ming Dynasty, "Cats below flowers" Anonymous, Song Dynasty, "Cats playing" Anonymous, Song Dynasty . Many many thanks to the amazing blog Poemas del río Wang for having compiled a huge collection of Chinese cat paintings, both historic and contemporary, from where I found the ones above: http://riowang.blogspot.com/2010/05/chinese-cats.html

Bioshock

12:21 PM
BioShock is a first-person shooter game developed by Irrational Games and designed by Ken Levine. Set in an alternate history 1960, the game places the player in the role of a plane crash survivor named Jack, who must explore the underwater city of Rapture, and survive attacks by the mutated beings and mechanical drones that populate it. The game incorporates elements found in role-playing and survival games, and is described by the developers …

Patent Drawings

2:03 PM
The U. S. National Archives collection on Flickr is one of the greatest places to find visual communication history related material. 131 sets in total, and one of them is all about patent application drawings, mostly from the 19th Century - although there are a few contemporary prize gems (such as Michael Jackson's application for anti-gravity shoes) as well: View the full set  here >>> .

Electrolux Cooker Hood - Family Lunch

3:04 PM
Found on  Centralasian's wonderful Flickr stream . While this appears to be a contemporary illustration, it still has a great retro feel to it and so I am labeling it accordingly.

Victorian shoe

8:53 PM
I found this here:  http://hubpages.com/hub/vintage-victorian-flowers-and-fruit , to where I was directed to from here:  http://wordplayblog.com/ . Rather nice pages for Victoriana, so I am thinking that they will be good things to share. I added the dark background, however you can find the original illustration here .

The Rosetta Stone

1:16 AM
Soldiers in Napoleon's army discovered the Rosetta Stone in 1799 while digging the foundations of an addition to a fort near the town of el-Rashid (Rosetta). On Napoleon's defeat, the stone became the property of the British under the terms of the Treaty of Alexandria (1801) along with other antiquities that the French had found. The Rosetta Stone has been exhibited in the British Museum since 1802, with only one break. Towards the end …

Map Typography from the early 20th Century

9:16 PM
A selection of images from the blogpost entitled Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Typography published on the BibliOdyssey blog earlier this week in which title pages, headings and letterforms of maps issued between 1880 and 1920 by the Sanborn company are shown. The images below are from the Virginia map from October 1907 (top); the South Carolina map from June 1919 (middle); and the Washington DC map from1903 (bottom).

Bembo...

10:39 PM
... is the name of the typeface which Francesco Griffo , working for the Aldine Press under Aldus Manutius , cut for Venetian scholar Cardinal Pietro Bembo in 1495. One of the noteworthy things about Bembo is the  fascination which contemporary graphic designers show for this 500+ year old typeface. Below are an anonymous poster based upon Bembo (top), "Bembo Type Work" by *Xantiel (middle), and "Font Poster" by creativespiri…

ECM Music

3:01 PM
Founded by producer Manfred Eicher in 1969, ECM has issued over a thousand albums spanning many idioms, including standard-setting jazz recordings by Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley, Jan Garbarek, Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and others: http://www.ecmrecords.com/Startseite/startseite.php Importantly, for the field of graphic design Ecm has also pursued a consistent visual language based upon an interpretation of Swiss Style in…

David Trautrimas

1:40 PM
http://www.trautrimas.ca/ David Trautrimas takes the components of familiar household appliances and transforms them into ironic/iconic architectural landscape paintings such as top secret Cold War era military outposts or residential building sites. The images below are "Micro Re-Instigator" from the The Spyfrost series (top), "The Fishing Complex" (middle) and the "Coffee Pot Towers" (bottom) from the Habitat ser…

The Visual Telling of Stories

12:49 AM
http://www.fulltable.com/CA/index.htm : Fabulous resource on mid 20th century living, told through all kinds of visual material, mostly advertisements and editorial design. Here is what Chris Mullen has to say about his own site: "Welcome to Chris Mullen's website, The Visual Telling of Stories. You can go to the main gate or shuffle about in the Samplers till you get some hang of the place. It was started in 1996. Material is added ever…

Fashion Art by Daniel Widrig

12:30 PM
Daniel Widrig studied architecture in Germany and the UK. After graduating from the Architectural Association in London with a Master’s Degree in Architecture and Urbanism in 2006 , he joined Zaha Hadid Architects where he worked on several major international projects. Since establishing his own studio in London, Widrig has been working on architectural concepts, products, objects and experimental furniture editions. His work has won several aw…
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