The Public Domain Review

A confession from the supposed man who caused a riot at the Haymarket Theatre in 1749, when he failed to shrink himself and crawl inside of a bottle.

Educational film from Bray studios all about that “marvellous sound producing instrument, the voice box”.

Among the “human curiosities” in P. T. Barnum’s American Museum was a supposed escapee from an Ottoman harem, a figure marketed as both the pinnacle of white beauty and an exoticised other. Betsy Golden Kellem investigates the complex of racial and cultural stereotypes that made the Circassian beauty such a sideshow spectacle.

To celebrate Dante's 700th anniversary, a look at how illustrators have tackled his most enduring work.

Long before Rauchenberg, Cage, or Malevich, Allais anticipated many of the innovations and experiments that would occupy 20th-century artists.

An attempt to parallel every possible case of amputation, allowing individuals to find a case identical to their own.

At once a reference manual to inspire artists and artisans, and a series of proto-modernist photographic montages anticipating the work of Joseph Cornell.

Why do helical seashells resemble spiralling galaxies and the human heart? Kevin Dann leads us into the gyre of James Bell Pettigrew’s Design in Nature (1908), a provocative and forgotten exploration of the world’s archetypal whorl.

In this affecting photo-essay, Federica Soletta invites us to sit with her awhile on the American porch.

Transcending the earthly concerns of betting and regal motifs, this pack of cards focuses exclusively on the heavens.