For the next 30 days Zazzle will offer one of these two cards to anyone for free. It is an effort by them to both introduce their card line to new people and to show their appreciation to sites such as Old Book Art which upload images to products there. It is not totally free, as unless you have a Zazzle Black account (which for a fee will provide unlimited free shipping) you need to pay tax and shipping. The cheapest shipping is about 2 bucks, so it it not that expensive. Anyway, the offer is good for one card only, and only for one of the two items pictured. You need to enter the code OBA1FREECARD at checkout. This post will be removed when the offer expires. The Red-throated Hummingbird (Trochilus colubris) by ZephyrusBooks Sun Detail from Antique Map circa 1780 by ZephyrusBooks   Legal 100% of card net sale price (excluding shipping and taxes) is deducted when qualifying greeting card is purchased from http://www.zazzle.com/ZephyrusBooks* and the coupon code OBA1FREECARD is applied at checkout. Offer does not apply to create your own cards. Offer does not apply to card orders of two or more. Buyer is responsible for shipping and handling and sales tax charges. ...

This is where a lot of my effort has been going lately. As soon as I got this book, I knew I had to get all the images edited and posted, as they are some of the nicest bird plates I have ever seen. The book not only has beautiful illustrations, but is historically notable because it was the first time hand-colored lithographs were used to illustrate a state bird book.   It is one of the favorite books in my library, and the scans do not even begin to do justice to the depth of color on the plates. It is a very hefty book, and the binding is fairly weak. The cover is in very good condition, though, and is intact and clean complete with the gilt picture of a bird, so I will be putting the book up for sale in my bookstore soon. While the plates have unfortunately been stamped by an overzealous Australian librarian, the book remains one of the nicer extant copies I have come across. This is largely because the cover is in such good shape, not to mention that the book is still intact (there were only 300 or so ...

I first posted the pictures from Through the Looking Glass a few years ago, and promised to update them with better versions when I got the time.  So,I have done that (the post is HERE) and am also adding similar pictures from Alice in Wonderland.  For both books I am providing both very large scale JPG (or jpeg) versions, and smaller but still useful PNG images with transparent backgrounds.  This transparency is useful for many applications.  The jpg's are available and easy to download in a number of sizes, up to a maximum of about 1800 pixels.  The PNG's are available in one size only: 584 pixels on the longest side; you will need to resize them on your own. The Wonderland Gallery is HERE.  The first item on the page is the subfolder with the PNG images. Title: Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There Author: Lewis Carroll Artist: John Tenniel Date Published: 1865

These images have been in my queue for posting here for some time.  I have not had a chance to edit them to the degree I desire, and as I have no idea when I will get to it I am posting the full, unedited page scans for now.  The folder is HERE Any further images posted will be in the same folder, but for now there are simply the 26 full page images. These are very nicely done and historically important chromolithographed plates from a book which was unfortunately damaged and coming apart when I acquired it.  The book, The Hawks and Owls of the United States in Their Relation to Agriculture, itself was an important study that helped to establish that, with few exceptions, hawks and owls were beneficial to farmers and not the scourge they were commonly perceived as. I have very large digital copies available for download in the gallery.  The originals have been put up for sale in my bookstore, and can be seen for sale HERE. Title: The Hawks and Owls of the United States U.S. Department of Agriculture Division of Ornithology and Mammalogy Bulletin No. 3 Prepared under the Direction of Dr. C. Hart Merriam, Ornithologist, by A. K. Fisher, M.D., ...

I didn't realize how long it had been since I posted new material here.  I've been working on a few projects on the side, and time has just slipped by.  I should be posting some nice bird images soon as well. I bought this atlas a couple of years ago, and as the binding was falling apart they were very easy to scan.   I have decided that the atlas itself is not salvageable as at least one map seemed to be missing,  the binding was disintegrating, the spine was missing, and the covers had fallen off.  Thus, I am selling the maps individually in my bookstore, ZephyrusBooks.com, on this page HERE. There are about 100 maps in the book.  This atlas had maps of all the French Departments and overseas possessions of the time.  Every department of France at the time is represented on its own page, with political, demographic and other information on the reverse Vuillemin issued may version s of this atlas over the years, changing the border details, title decorations, fonts and the like over from edition to edition.   The size would also vary, and while not the larges examples, these are larger than many. Alexandre Vuillemin (1812-1880) ...

Des Kindes erstes Lesebuch Illustrierte Fibel mit farbigen Bildern (The Child's Alphabet Book Primer Illustrated with Colored Pictures) was published in a number of editions in the late 19th century.  This is an earlier edition, I believe, possibly from the 1880's, but I am not positive.  It lacks a colored cover, which some later editions had, but that is hardly conclusive.  No dates are found in the book itself. I post it mainly for the numerous color and black & white illustrations, but I have added a folder of the entire book (unedited, raw scans in very high resolution) for anyone interested in the book as a whole.  It is written in, but then again it was a child's school book. I have not been able to edit and post the cleaned up pictures yet, but will get to it shortly.  In the meantime the full page scans (very large) are HERE. Title: Des Kindes erstes Lesebuch Illustrierte Fibel mit farbigen Bildern (The Child's Alphabet Book Primer Illustrated with Colored Pictures) Author: Rudolf Dietlein Artist: Various Publisher: J. F. Schreiber Date Published: 1880's (circa) Here is what the images currently look like.   They are very large, so there is plenty of room to play with if you want ...

Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820–1905) joined the war effort with the U.S. Sanitary Commission.  Her book is very comprehensive, and attractive artistically for the black and white plates, portraits, and eight colored plates of old flags. The book opens with an extensive description of the Battle Flags.   I cannot transcribe it all, but the text is available at Google Books, HERE. As quoted from Reynolds Historical Library at the University of Alabama at Birmingham: "Mary Ashton Rice Livermore, a native of Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the most well-known female figures in the Union relief movement. Before the Civil War broke out, Mary had already devoted her life to social, humanitarian and charitable causes. In her early twenties, she worked as a family tutor on a large rural Virginia plantation. In this position, she came face to face with the injustices of slavery and became a staunch abolitionist. During these pre-war years, Mary also became known for her involvement in the temperance movement, which especially thrived after her marriage to fellow temperance supporter and Universalist minister, Daniel Parker Livermore, in 1845. Mrs. Livermore organized a juvenile temperance group, the Cold Water Army, for whom she wrote short stories and read them aloud (Holland ...

Here, unedited but for the straightening and cropping of the margins, are 14 map and chart images from the Library of Congress.   As with other LOC images, these are free and Public Domain.  I have converted them to JPEG format for easier access, as otherwise you would need to download them via special viewing software. These are from a 16 century book: "Portolan atlas of 9 charts and a world map, etc. Dedicated to Hieronymus Ruffault, Abbot of St. Vaast. (Agnese, Battista).  The notes state: Manuscript, pen-and-ink and watercolor, on vellum. I have no plans to edit or enhance these for posting here.  They could not be much improved by casual editing, so I will leave them as be.  They are available at full scale in the GALLERY. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Atlantic Ocean "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Eastern Mediterranean, Greece, Turkey"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="182" caption="Compass Rose"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Armillary Sphere"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Black Sea "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Central Mediterranean with Italy, Sicily"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Frontis"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Indian Ocean "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Northern Europe "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Pacific Ocean"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Straits of Gibraltar with Northwest Africa and Spain "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Western ...

I had these scanned and ready to post seven or eight months ago at least. They kept getting shoved to the back burner, and only when I got an email from someone who saw a reference I had made to them was I finally prompted to actually get them organized and posted here. The folder is HERE in the GALLERY. A SUBFOLDER has the images without the text. I will link to some images soon as I get the time. Title: The Flower Children: The Little Cousins of the Field and Garden Author: Elizabeth Gordon Artist: M. T. Ross Publisher: P. F. Volland (Chicago) Date Published: 1910 The Flower Children Store is a shop where you can purchase many items with these images. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Flower Children Zazzle Store"][/caption] I will soon add images linking directly to the Gallery.

I am in the process of scanning this entire atlas.   I acquired this very dilapidated 1883 edition of Cram's popular atlas, and while the binding was shot the pages were in fairly good condition.  I have looked on line and there are few good images available for free public access, so I decided I would post not only the maps and charts but the whole book as well.  Having an entire edition online will hopefully be of help as a reference that goes beyond the pleasures of simply seeing the maps and art. So far I have scanned the first 125 pages or so.   I am posting them in their entirety in THEIR OWN SUB-FOLDER of the atlas' primary folder.  I have not edited the maps yet so for the time being you will only see these full page images.  I have not re-oriented or retitled them, so maps may be sideways, and two-page maps appear in parts.  They do appear in order, though, and the numbers in the titles correspond to the page numbers. The maps and images are not that scarce, but remain collectible and are an affordable way for collectors and map enthusiasts to obtain a desirable, vintage 1800's ...

Here are some nice pictures from Diamonds and Toads, an 1870's book.  These were forwarded to me by Janice Wald, who scanned the images from the book, which belonged to her great grandmother.  You can see the notation from 1894 on the top of the first page of text. These are from the McLoughlin Brothers American edition, which was slightly altered from the original English edition.  Any edition prior to 1900 is rather scarce, and in good condition is sought after by collectors. The story is adapted from Charles Perrault, one of the seminal figures in the birth of the modern fairy tale.   The illustrator was Kate Greenaway, who was a prolific illustrator of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.   Some of her other illustrations are catalogued online and available HERE at the Illuminated Books Project. I have posted all the pages as originally scanned in their own folder.   Thus you can read the full text.  I could not find this exact version of the text online, so posting as text instead of images is not possible now (as I am not about to transcribe it).  I will update this post if I find the text.   The images I have cleaned ...

Here is a fun collection of small drawings by Paul Mercuri from an early to mid 19th century book, Costumes Historiques (Paris, 1850's or 6o's).  I received the scans from a colleague and they were quite dirty, so I have done a lot of touch-up.   Unfortunately, the resolution is not as high as I would like, but they are more than adequate for most online uses, clipart, illustrating reports and the like. As always, these public domain jpg images are free of charge and may be used for any purpose.  Although I have put a lot of effort into cleaning spots and smudges, as well as enhancing the colors, they are still in the public domain and have no usage restrictions.  Donations for my efforts and for the costs of running this site are always appreciated, but are by no means expected or necessary. All 130 or so items may be browsed and downloaded in the gallery.   Images may be downloaded one at a time in at least 3 different sized, or you may download a large number at once via ZIP file by using the shopping cart feature in the gallery.  It is called a shopping cart, but there is no ...

I acquired some very nice high resolution scans of an old butterfly book, "Europe's Best-Known Butterflies" (F. Nemos, Berlin, 1895).  The images were available at Wikimedia Commons, but needed a lot of cleaning up for me to post them here.  I separated the individual butterflies and caterpillars from the larger plates, and did some color enhancement and editing of smudges. The result is close to 200 images in the Gallery here at Old Book Art.   The original 18 full plates (cleaned up) are in their own folder here. The individual butterfly and caterpillar images range from quite small (less than 500 pixels) to very large (3000 pixels or so.)  Some of these look like moths, but I cannot always tell a butterfly from a moth that easily.  The full plates are each about 3850 by 5450 pixels.  As always, these pictures are free and available for no charge here at Old Book Art.  Donations are appreciated but by no means required as these are public domain images that I have simply cleaned up and collected. Here are a few samples.  If you want to browse them all go to the GALLERY. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="141" caption="European Butterflies Plate 10"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Arctia caja ...

Alpha Portland Cement Company Blueprints and Concrete Plans These came in a folder that I found in an old box of maps and blueprints from an architect's estate.  Although not a book, they are in the public domain and interesting so I thought I would post some crude copies. I have not edited them or cleaned them up, and there is some loss to the margins on most of them because they were a bit too large for a scanner.   The actual plans are almost all there, though.  I figure anyone who is interested can clean them up after download if need be (although they are perfectly usable as they are now).   I have posted them at very high resolution (about 6500 by 4500 pixels) to preserve details and lettering. I gather this series, all from 1910-1920, was an effort by the Alpha Portland Cement Company to promote the use of concrete and cement in building.   I think I have almost a complete set here, but I have no definitive reference as to what plans were included. As always, these high resolution JPEG  images are all free of charge and ready to be downloaded one at a time or in bulk via a ...

Collected from my own atlases and maps, others that have been shared with me, and from various online collections, these are available together in one album for ease of browsing and comparison.  Most of the maps not from my own books are from the Library of Congress, where they area available free in TIFF or other archival format.  I have converted them for easy use into JPEG, and have cleaned a lot of them up extensively. This Gallery will continue to grow, but it is at a point now that it is well worth browsing if you are looking for a good sized image. Each map image below leads to the page for that map.  The album is HERE. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Oronce Fine, 1531, Noua, et Integra Uniuersi Orbis Descriptio"][/caption] A very interesting double hemisphere with polar projections. Terra Australis dominates the south pole, while the Americas are very undefined. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Fernando Bertelli, 1565, Universale Descrittione di Tutta la Terra Conosciuta Fin Qui"][/caption] Two wind heads adorn the upper corners. The continental edges are jagged and undefined, and North America is shown as almost wholly contiguous with Asia. Sea monsters and ships roam the oceans. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Jodocus Hondius, 1595, ...