Walter Crane was the second son of Thomas Crane, portrait painter and miniaturist. Early on in his career he came under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and was a student of John Ruskin. In 1864 he began to illustrate a series of sixpenny books of nursery rhymes in three colors for the printer Edmund Evans. The Baby’s [...]
If you love a man so badly that it hurts, and you know you’re only a counterfeit like me, should you take what the gods offer, or should you leave him for some other girl who could give him children with real blood instead of the counterfeit thing? That was Peggy’s problem. Image credit/Copy credit.
Ahhh … Valentine’s Day! It’s interesting to see how the day has changed and how the childhood innocence of the cards of yore has been commoditized and replaced with racier fare and the impersonal touch of e-cards. However, below we harken back to the turn of the 20th Century with a collection of sweet and [...]
Printed on verso: “By way of acknowledgement, the Shell Oil Company of Canada, Limited, wishes to thank the following institutions for making their facilities available for the research work necessary to complete these stories: The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago; The Public Library of New York City; The [...]
Ariadne auf Naxos : Oper in einem Aufzuge von Hugo von Hofmannsthal; Musik von Richard Strauss, zu spielen auf dem “Bürger aus Edelmann” des Molière; Skizzen für die Kostüme und Dekorationen von Ernst Stern. Ariadne auf Naxos: an opera in one act by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Strauss’s music to play on the ”noble citizens” of Molière; with sketches for the costumes and decorations by Ernst Stern. THE [...]
In the late 19th Century, a woman with a bit more meat on her bones was what was in. Contrast that with now, where everyone wants to be thin! This advertisement from 1895 shows a young woman with a package of Loring’s Fat-Ten-U food tablets and as well as Loring’s Corpula, a fat-producting food. From [...]
From Wikipedia: Jose Guadalupe Posada: (1852–1913) was a Mexican cartoonist, illustrator and artist whose work has influenced many Latin American artists and cartoonists because of its satirical acuteness and political engagement. Posada’s best known works are his calaveras, which often assume various costumes, such as the Calavera de la Catrina, the “Calavera of the Female Dandy,” which was meant to satirize the life of the upper classes during the reign of Porfirio Díaz. [...]
From the Library of Congress: Photochrom prints, also called Aäc, are ink-based images produced through “the direct photographic transfer of an original negative onto litho and chromographic printing plates.” Hans Jakob Schmid (1856-1924), who worked for the Swiss firm Orell Füssli, invented the technique in the 1880s. Füssli published the prints through a company with [...]
“CIRCULATION IN SOUTH AFRICA OF POSTAL CARDS ATTACKING THE PACKING INDUSTRY OF THE U.S.” From an October 12, 1907 State Department memo: Letter, October 1, 1907, from A.R. Urion to Mr. Livingstone, sent to Dep’t by Mr. Livingstone, calling attention to the circulation in South Africa of scurrilous postal cards attacking the packing industry of [...]
Gertie is a dinosaur who lives in present times. She encounters a train and dreams of being the life of the party in her time. Produced and animated by Winsor McCay featuring a piano score composed and performed by Philip Carli. (Video courtesy of Rialto Productions/Library of Congress/Tehrkot Media)
The set is of the interior of a bakery. A man in a baker’s hat and costume enters and begins kneading some dough on a table by the oven. He notices a make-believe rat crawling up the side of a nearby barrel and throws the dough at the rat, covering it completely. He then goes [...]
(Images courtesy of the George Eastman House Collection and the Library of Congress/Tehrkot Media)
“AQUATIC TOY – ISSUED AS PATENT 109,992” Patent drawing, dated December 6, 1870, by A.W. Hart and W.M. Tileston. (National Archives/Tehrkot Media)
Publication of Civil War envelopes began as early as the mid-1850’s, when north-south divisions began to take shape, but ended prior to the war’s conclusion because most believed that it was too indulgent and expensive to continue production in a time of war. Envelopes of a more satiric nature utilized themes surrounding the military, executions, [...]
Reproduction of a political cartoon depicting Uncle Sam arguing with a woman while a slave on the right tiptoes by the couple. Uncle Sam holds a newspaper marked “WANTED,” while the woman has a newspaper behind her back marked “STATES.” (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress/Tehrkot Media)
From the Personal Papers Collection at the Library of Virginia, an interesting collection of sketches, and the story behind them, from a Confederate soldier’s notebook, depicting his company’s movements throughout the Commonwealth. In May 1863, a team of Confederate topographical engineers surveying and mapping Louisa County were surprised by Union cavalry. All but one of [...]
