Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Public Domain Books On-Line

Kellscraft Studio's Web Text-ures: Public Domain Books On-Line. All of the books listed here are out-of-print, public domain books. The focus is primarily Arts and Crafts influenced publications from the turn-of-the-20th-century.

Bluebird from A Year With the Birds, by Alice E. Ball. Illustrated by Robert Bruce Horsfall

Monday, March 21, 2005

Bookplates from My Home Library

Downloadable bookplates that can be used any way you like (except for commercial purposes). These plates are donated by the illustrators. I like this one from Anita Jeram

They are also appealing for new bookplates. Here's an opportunity for some fun. If you do share a bookplate with them, will you please let me know?

New Bookplate Appeal
Are you one of those generous-spirited artists who has already created a bookplate for our site?
Or an artist who hasn't yet got round to doing so and feels horribly, horribly guilty?
If you're either, please, please would you consider designing us one with a specific wording we find we're now being asked for all the time, namely:

This book was donated to
____________________

by
____________________

Out there are so many generous people donating books to schools or to local libraries. The grateful recipients have been begging for a bookplate especially designed to mark the donor's generosity, and thank them personally.
Please have a go! Bookplates can be emailed to us or, if you prefer to post originals, send an email and we'll promptly tell you where to post it.

Friday, March 18, 2005

Art from the USDA

Treasures of the National Agricultural Library:
Select offerings of 300dpi images from the magazine archives, USDA

Pomological Watercolors: A Wealth of Beauty and Detail
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, USDA hired about 50 illustrators to produce watercolors of new varieties of fruits and nuts. The result was a collection of thousands of beautiful and precise renderings that serve as accurate records of the fruits of that era. One of those prolific artists, Amanda A. Newton, was the granddaughter of Isaac Newton, the nation's first Commissioner of Agriculture.


Curtis's Botanical Magazine
Hand-painted watercolors of some of the world's most beautiful and interesting flowers grace the pages of a historic British gardening journal called Curtis's Botanical Magazine.


The site offers high resolution images of the illustrations. Clicking on the image you want will take you to another page with a "Download high resolution" link. A question form will appear. It's optional; just click Download.

More collections from The National Agricultural Library are not high resolution.

Digital Archive of Lace

I don't make or collect lace but am fascinated by it. The motifs and repeats serve as inpiration for quilting designs, stencils, carved stamps and motifs for collage. The information in this archive is downloadable as PDF files. I like opening these in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro so that they can be manipulated to make patterns or an image to print and use in a collage. I hope you enjoy this archive as much as I do.

From a catalog, Carl Abildgaard, Kobenhavn, 1916, 8 pages

This archive contains articles, full page books, illustrations, catalogs, salesman's sample books and much more. This huge resource is kept by Ralph E. Griswold in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Arizona, Tucson. In 1995, he retired to have more time for his research, programming, and graphics interests. His current work is in number theory and the computational and mathematical aspects of weaving.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Friday, March 11, 2005

Flora von Deutschland

Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz
Prof. Dr.Otto Wilhelm Thomé

Small and large (300 dpi) images
This page is part of Kurt Stübers online library of historic biological books

Free Vintage Images

From Above the Mark. There are four galleries of images.

Easter Postcards

Easter Postcards from the Elleanor "Nellie" Roberts Kreischer LaClair collection
circa 1907-1920's

Friday, March 04, 2005

Hand embroidery patterns



Andrea English shares a huge library of free patterns
for hand embroidery at Needlecrafter.com
Some are vintage, some are her original designs and others
are adapted from finished textiles in her collection.