Wednesday 14 June 2017 at 17:54
Amongst the assorted curiosities described in Olaus Magnus' 1555 tome on Nordic life was the morse — a hirsuite, fearsome, walrus-like beast, that was said to snooze upon cliffs while hanging by its teeth. Natalie Lawrence explores the career of this chimerical wonder, shaped both by scholarly images of a fabulous north and the grisly corporeality of the trade in walrus skins, teeth, and bone.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2017/06/14/decoding-the-morse-the-history-of-16th-century-narcoleptic-walruses/
Tuesday 13 June 2017 at 18:46
Anna Laetitia Barbauld's controversial poem which presciently imagines a future Britain in ruin, eclipsed by the rising might of America.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/eighteen-hundred-and-eleven-1812/
Tuesday 6 June 2017 at 19:48
Series of fantastic anthropomorphic maps of European countries, each footnoted by a witty quatrain, was produced by London publisher Hodder and Stoughton in the 1860s.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/geographical-fun-being-humourous-outlines-of-various-countries-1868/
Thursday 1 June 2017 at 18:39
15th-century how-to guide in the art of combat, including unarmed, with daggers, swords, poleaxes and on horseback.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/italian-fighting-manual-ca-1410/
Wednesday 31 May 2017 at 16:43
The Berlin of the 1920s is often associated with a certain image of excess and decadence, but it was a quite different side of the city — the sobriety and desolation of its industrial and working-class districts — which came to obsess the painter Gustav Wunderwald. Mark Hobbs explores.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2017/05/31/gustav-wunderwalds-paintings-of-weimar-berlin/
Tuesday 30 May 2017 at 18:37
This delightful book features a collection of nineteenth-century textile samples — in the form of watercolour copies — from the Robert Maison company.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/book-of-french-textile-samples-1863/
Wednesday 24 May 2017 at 19:12
Strangely alluring images from a report by German zoologist Ludwig Heinrich Philipp Döderlein on starfish collected during the Siboga Expedition around Indonesia.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/photographs-of-sea-stars-1917/
Tuesday 23 May 2017 at 19:04
Collection of acerbic animal fables, penned by the likes of Honoré de Balzac and George Sand, and illustrated by the brilliant J. J. Grandville.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/public-and-private-life-of-animals-1877/
Thursday 18 May 2017 at 17:05
Gardening lessons from the late 1920s, centreing on the cultivation of beans, including some wonderful time-lapse footage and inter-titles to match.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/growing-things-a-film-lesson-in-nature-study-1928/
Wednesday 17 May 2017 at 17:54
John Bevis explores the various feats of cunning and subterfuge undertaken by the Kearton brothers — among the very first professional wildlife photographers — in their pioneering attempts to get ever closer to their subjects.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2017/05/17/stuffed-ox-dummy-tree-artificial-rock-deception-in-the-work-of-richard-and-cherry-kearton/