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/
Thursday 11 May 2017 at 18:48
Depictions of the destroyed and broken landscapes of the First and Second World War by the English artist Paul Nash, amongst the most important landscape artists of the twentieth century.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-war-art-of-paul-nash-1917-1944/
Wednesday 10 May 2017 at 18:23
From whole multi-paragraph excerpts to single lines, this wonderful little book dedicates itself, as the title declares, to presenting the wit and wisdom to be found in Miguel de Cervantes' masterpiece.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/wit-and-wisdom-of-don-quixote-1867/
Tuesday 9 May 2017 at 18:13
Exquisite miniatures of 16th-century Persia by Bosnian-born Ottoman polymath and all-round genius Matrakcı Nasuh.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-maps-of-matrakci-nasuh-16th-century-polymath/
Thursday 4 May 2017 at 15:30
Jon Crabb on the witch-craze of Early Modern Europe, and how the concurrent rise of the mass-produced woodcut helped forge the archetype of the broom-riding crone — complete with cauldron and cats — so familiar today.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2017/05/04/woodcuts-and-witches/
Thursday 27 April 2017 at 19:12
A remarkable short, most likely staged, showing a stable on fire with horses being rescued and humans fleeing.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-burning-stable-1896/
Wednesday 26 April 2017 at 19:25
CONJECTURES #4 — Carla Nappi conjures a dreamscape from four archival fragments — four oblique references to women named “Elizabeth” who lived on the watershed of the 16th-to-17th century.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-elizabeths-elemental-historians/