love note 08: archives of catalogues
Hey folks!
Time is flying on my end, how about on yours? I can't believe it's already April and that I'm starting my preparations to move to Vermont this summer. In Phoenix, it's been in the 90s all week and, boy, I had not missed that desert heat.
Bird's Eye Bed (2021)
I'm getting my second dose of the vaccine this week and the implications of that still haven't hit me. I wish you and yours a speedy vaccination!
The Kickstarter for Incoming!, which includes my graphic short story is still running so please consider backing if you'd like to read Stranded on Earth.
love note 08: archives of catalogues
I wrote a bit about this in my first love note, but I recently came across The Public Domain Review and I could (and have) spend hours on there at a time. They curate a variety of images that have now entered the public domain and many of them are scientific illustrations or cartoons or other ways of explaining the world around the artist at the time of rendering.
Adam Ludwig Wirsing’s Marmora et adfines aliquos lapides coloribus suis exprimi (Illustrations of marble types and some related stones), 1776
Poissons, Ecrevisses et Crabes (1719) was the earliest known publication in colour on fish.
If you've ever talked to me, you know how passionately I believe in the union of images and words and how the combination of the two will lead to better comprehension and retention of information.
And is there anything more delightful than a beautifully made diagram? Than seeing something laid out to be able to look at at your own leisure, compare, analyze, etc.
I could cover the walls of my home with these sort of diagrams, in fact I've had prints of many of them in my cart for months. I wish there was more attention to these sorts of art forms.
Left: Agnes Catlow’s Drops of Water; Their Marvellous and Beautiful Inhabitants Displayed by The Microscope (1851); Right: Color problems: A practical manual for the lay student of color, a book by the American artist Emily Noyes Vanderpoel (1842-1939).
Urania’s Mirror (1824)
It's especially interesting to see how we tried to share information and render unseeable things in the time before photography. The artists truly had to think and draw creatively to convey information. In other instances, there is some true freedom in deciding to cheekily show a map as a cartoon or and the beauty of some schemas and diagrams is so astounding it looks like abstract art.
Going through lots of these images puts you in a trance as you scroll through their beauty.
So I'm going to allow you to marvel at these archival images of ways of cataloguing, recording and explaining. I tried to provide enough context because you can learn a lot from these images. But again, I urge you to take a gander through The Public Domain Review, there's so much you can uncover.
Ptolemaic View of the Universe, Andreas Cellarius, 1708
George Mayerle's Eye Test Chart (ca. 1907)
Images from an Arabic manuscript featuring schematics for water powered systems, pulleys and gearing mechanisms. The date is unknown but is thought to be from sometime between the 16th and 19th century.
From a series of anthropomorphic maps of European countries, produced by London publisher Hodder and Stoughton (1868)
Maps of nervous systems. Left: Illustration from Santiago Ramon y Cajal's Contribución al conocimiento de los centros nerviosos de los insectos, 1915; Right: Nerve cells in a dog's olfactory bulb (detail), from Camillo Golgi's Sulla fina anatomia degli organi centrali del sistema nervoso, 1885
Skating with Bror Myer (1921)
Kaishi Hen (Analysis of Cadavers), an anatomical atlas from the dawn of experimental medicine in Japan, published in Kyoto in 1772
The Tibetan Book of Proportions (18th c.)
Harold Fisk’s Meander Maps of the Mississippi River (1944); These maps trace the ever-shifting banks of the river
readings
poetry nook
Currently reading:
Tokyo Ueno Station by Miri Yū
A meditative look at the often forgetten and vulnerable homeless community. Through the eyes of the recently deceased Kazu who haunts Ueno park where he spent the last few years of his life, Yū weaves together the personal experiences of the narrator, the historical moments in recent history that he lived through and subtly imbues it all with cultural and social commentary. This has been an especially poignant read in the wake of the recent LA protests over the closure of Echo Park.
Once again I'm getting frustrated with social media and may dip off it again. If you know anyone who may be interested in these newsletters, could you forward them one? I am tired of algorithms dictating who gets to see what I try to put out there.
much love,
k