The Public Domain Review

This is just an automatic copy of Public Domain Review blog.

Walter Crane’s Painting Book (1889)

Wednesday 16 November 2016 at 18:28

Long before the current craze for adult colouring books came this 19th-century painting book from one of the finest contributors to the Golden Age of illustration.

Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/walter-cranes-painting-book-1889/


Rainbows in Art

Tuesday 15 November 2016 at 19:50

Depictions spanning more than 800 years – in chronological order – of that most enigmatic of weather phenomena, the rainbow.

Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/rainbows-in-art/


“Let us Calculate!”: Leibniz, Llull, and the Computational Imagination

Thursday 10 November 2016 at 19:28

Three hundred years after the death of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and seven hundred years after the birth of Ramon Llull, Jonathan Gray looks at how their early visions of computation and the “combinatorial art” speak to our own age of data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence.

Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2016/11/10/let-us-calculate-leibniz-llull-and-computational-imagination/


The Human Alphabet

Thursday 3 November 2016 at 19:40

Collection of alphabets comprised of the human body.

Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-human-alphabet/


The Infernal Cauldron (1903)

Thursday 27 October 2016 at 17:23

Short film by Georges Méliès, released through his Star Film Company, featuring demons, flames, spectres, and a brilliant array of the film-maker's usual arsenal of tricks.

Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-infernal-cauldron-1903/


Richard Hakluyt and Early English Travel

Wednesday 26 October 2016 at 20:00

The Principle Navigations, Richard Hakluyt's great championing of Elizabethan colonial exploration, remains one of the most important collections of English travel writing ever published. As well as the escapades of famed names such as Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, Nandini Das looks at how the book preserves many stories of lesser known figures that surely would have been otherwise lost.

Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2016/10/26/richard-hakluyt-and-early-english-travel/


Ernst Haeckel’s Bats (1904)

Tuesday 25 October 2016 at 18:37

Bats galore featured on plate 67 from Ernst Haeckel’s visually dazzling Kunstformen der Natur (1904).

Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/ernst-haeckels-bats-1904/


Potts’s Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster (1845)

Thursday 20 October 2016 at 17:44

19th-century reprint, with additional introduction by James Crossley, of Thomas Potts' The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, first published in 1613.

Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/pottss-discovery-of-witches-in-the-county-of-lancaster-1845/


Every Society Invents the Failed Utopia it Deserves

Wednesday 19 October 2016 at 16:54

CONJECTURES #2 — John Tresch stumbles across an unusual piece, purported to be from the pen of noted anarchist Louise Michel, telling of a cross-dressing revolutionary unhinged at the helm of some kind of sociopolitical astrolabe.

Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/every-society-invents-the-failed-utopia-it-deserves/


Harry Clarke’s Looking Glass

Wednesday 12 October 2016 at 19:04

With their intricate line and often ghoulish tone, the works of Irish artist Harry Clarke are amongst the most striking in the history of illustration and stained glass design. Kelly Sullivan explores how, unknown to many at the time, Clarke took to including his own face in many of his pictures.

Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2016/10/12/harry-clarkes-looking-glass/