id stringlengths 7 126 | text stringlengths 27 49.8k | source stringclasses 1
value | date stringlengths 11 18 | author stringclasses 247
values | type stringclasses 3
values | added stringdate 2024-05-01 21:38:18 2024-05-01 21:50:35 | metadata dict |
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hippolyte-hodeau-trench-art | A Family Tree: Hippolyte Hodeau’s Trench Art (ca. 1917)
Text by Sasha Archibald and Hunter Dukes
Mar 26, 2024
Thierry Dornberger’s family keepsakes include a memento exceptionally delicate. His great-grandfather, Hippolyte Hodeau, was a World War I private who served in Argonne. As Dornberger relates, Hodeau “made t... | public-domain-review | Mar 26, 2024 | Sasha Archibald and Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:18.287720 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/hippolyte-hodeau-trench-art/"
} |
maria-catharina-prestel | Maria Catharina Prestel’s Printed Cabinet of Drawings (ca. 1780s)
Text by Miya Tokumitsu
Apr 24, 2024
From the Renaissance onward, drawings have fascinated collectors and connoisseurs, who often perceive them as intimate affordances of an artist’s creative process — prized as mediums of an artist’s physical gestures... | public-domain-review | Apr 24, 2024 | Miya Tokumitsu | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:18.614041 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/maria-catharina-prestel/"
} |
passio-verbigenae | Grotesqueries at Gethsemane: Marcus Gheeraerts’ Passio Verbigenae (ca. 1580)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Mar 27, 2024
In his final days, Christ is haunted by grotesqueries. Cherubs and putti ogle the last supper’s lamb. Hybrid creatures sprout up in the Garden of Gethsemane. And during his descent into Limbo, demonic bodie... | public-domain-review | Mar 27, 2024 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:19.113033 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/passio-verbigenae/"
} |
wierix-flemish-proverbs | Flemish Proverbs by Jan Wierix (ca. 1568)
Text by Miya Tokumitsu
Mar 14, 2024
“I wear mourning, seeing the world in which so much deceit abounds.” So laments The Misanthrope as he skulks along, withdrawn emotionally and sartorially, in a deep-hooded cloak. But world-weariness does not amount to wisdom in Jan Wierix’... | public-domain-review | Mar 14, 2024 | Miya Tokumitsu | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:19.568427 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/wierix-flemish-proverbs/"
} |
dr-berkeleys-discovery | The Afterimage of Death: Dr. Berkeley's Discovery (1889)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Jan 16, 2024
In 1888, the year before Dr. Berkeley’s Discovery was published, Jack the Ripper mutilated his second victim, Annie Chapman. Lacking a witness to the murder, the press wondered if an image of the killer might be preserved on h... | public-domain-review | Jan 16, 2024 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:20.059361 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/dr-berkeleys-discovery/"
} |
capital-and-labor | Mayday, Mayday: Capital and Labor (1907)
Text by Hunter Dukes
May 1, 2024
Labor is of divine origin, and no man should be ashamed that he is a workman. . . . We are a country of millionaires and beggars, and between these two extremes of society, there is a chasm so wide that no power under our present system of sel... | public-domain-review | May 1, 2024 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:20.245628 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/capital-and-labor/"
} |
blackwork | Paper Gems: Early Modern Blackwork Prints
Text by Miya Tokumitsu
Jan 30, 2024
Early modern prints are recycled waste products of everyday life. Paper was fashioned from soiled and tattered linen, which was boiled and beaten into pulp, then strained and dried in sheets. Ink was an admixture of lampblack or soot blend... | public-domain-review | Jan 30, 2024 | Miya Tokumitsu | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:20.464109 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/blackwork/"
} |
photographs-of-palestinian-life | Photographs of Palestinian Life (ca. 1896–1919)
Text by Hunter Dukes and Adam Green
Apr 30, 2024
Girls pose in ornately embroidered tatreez. Women hold cauliflowers stacked four heads high; men carefully consider the heaps at a watermelon market. Commerce thrives: olive oil soap factories pile their bars by the thou... | public-domain-review | Apr 30, 2024 | Hunter Dukes and Adam Green | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:20.688247 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/photographs-of-palestinian-life/"
} |
celestial-phenomena-16th-century-germany | Signs and Wonders: Celestial Phenomena in 16th-Century Germany
Text by Hunter Dukes
Apr 11, 2024
The villagers of Strasbourg may have heard about a war in heaven while reading the Book of Revelation; in 1554, they witnessed one with their own eyes. As a broadsheet published in June of that year records, a bloody, fi... | public-domain-review | Apr 11, 2024 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:21.023237 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/celestial-phenomena-16th-century-germany/"
} |
weird-islands | Distortions and Grimaces: Jean de Bosschère’s Weird Islands (1921)
Text by Kevin Dann
Apr 9, 2024
One wonders how many children might have tugged at a parent’s coattails to cajole a present of Jean de Bosschère’s Weird Islands when it was first released in 1921. A glance at any one of its 120 illustrations, all done... | public-domain-review | Apr 9, 2024 | Kevin Dann | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:21.328809 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/weird-islands/"
} |
merian-metamorphosis | Maria Sibylla Merian’s Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (1705)
Text by Paloma Ruiz
Mar 6, 2024
Pomelos, pomegranates, plantains, and the sociopolitical importance of a seedpod. When Maria Sibylla Merian first set foot in Suriname, her senses were overcome with surprising tastes, sights, and smells. A dissected... | public-domain-review | Mar 6, 2024 | Paloma Ruiz | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:21.669068 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/merian-metamorphosis/"
} |
millions-of-cats | Unwashed Furry Masses: Wanda Gág’s Millions of Cats (1928)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Feb 15, 2024
For the feline minded, there is rarely too much of a good thing when it comes to cats; Wanda Hazel Gág’s Millions of Cats (1928) tells a tale that proves the rare exception. Considered the oldest American children’s book sti... | public-domain-review | Feb 15, 2024 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:22.129291 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/millions-of-cats/"
} |
my-lady-nicotine | Never-again Land: J. M. Barrie's My Lady Nicotine (1896)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Feb 6, 2024
Before he conceived of Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie decided it was time to grow up and quit smoking. He justifies this decision in My Lady Nicotine: A Study in Smoke (originally published in 1890), which begins with a common trio of... | public-domain-review | Feb 6, 2024 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:22.634604 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/my-lady-nicotine/"
} |
sutherland-macdonald-tattoos | The Art of Sutherland Macdonald, Victorian England’s “Michelangelo of Tattooing” (ca. 1905)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Mar 12, 2024
It’s an era when tattoos are no longer taboo: men and women flock to a London studio to enjoy cooling drinks, a snug stove, and the steady hum of a modern electromagnetic machine, fitted with... | public-domain-review | Mar 12, 2024 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:23.167613 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/sutherland-macdonald-tattoos/"
} |
edith-wharton-italian-villas | Edith Wharton’s Italian Villas and their Gardens (1904)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Apr 2, 2024
“The traveller returning from Italy, with his eyes and imagination full of the ineffable Italian garden-magic, knows vaguely that the enchantment exists; that he has been under its spell, and that it is more potent, more endurin... | public-domain-review | Apr 2, 2024 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:23.480435 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/edith-wharton-italian-villas/"
} |
earthquakes-in-japanese-woodblock-prints | Tales of the Catfish God: Earthquakes in Japanese Woodblock Prints (1855)
Text by Erica X Eisen
Feb 21, 2024
Legend has it that when the tremors of the 1855 Ansei Edo earthquake had finally subsided, there were so many dead that survivors were forced to carry their loved ones’ bodies away in sacks of coal and sake b... | public-domain-review | Feb 21, 2024 | Erica X Eisen | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:24.023102 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/earthquakes-in-japanese-woodblock-prints/"
} |
animated-putty | I Also Am Formed Out of the Clay: Animated Putty (1911)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Mar 5, 2024
Decades before Gumby rode Pokey and Wallace petted Gromit, tendrils of clay writhed with agency on a dim screen. Ernst Haeckel once fantasized about Urschleim, a kind of primeval sludge from which all biological beings arose; An... | public-domain-review | Mar 5, 2024 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:24.650973 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/animated-putty/"
} |
junghuhn-java-album | Lithographs from Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn’s Java-Album (1854)
Text by Sasha Archibald
Feb 13, 2024
Java-Album was printed from drawings by Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn to accompany a four-volume travelogue about his expeditions in the Dutch East Indies, published in 1854. The images were printed at great trouble — eleven co... | public-domain-review | Feb 13, 2024 | Sasha Archibald | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:24.991921 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/junghuhn-java-album/"
} |
occult-chemistry | Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater’s Occult Chemistry (1908)
Text by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Apr 16, 2024
“Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the cons... | public-domain-review | Apr 16, 2024 | Hugh Aldersey-Williams | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:25.201358 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/occult-chemistry/"
} |
galateo | The Age of Impoliteness: Galateo: or, A Treatise on Politeness and Delicacy of Manners (1774 edition)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Feb 27, 2024
In the 1770s, a contagion was sweeping England and women were in danger: the danger of “contracting habits entirely opposite to their natural delicacy”. Take Belinda, for example, w... | public-domain-review | Feb 27, 2024 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:25.644927 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/galateo/"
} |
gotham-attucks | Sheet Music Covers for the Gotham-Attucks Company, ca. 1905–1911
Text by Dorothy Berry
Feb 1, 2024
We are all unfortunately immersed in the visual legacy of Blackface minstrelsy. Caricatures that mutated Black men into creatures, women into mockeries — offensive ornamentation designed to highlight a lascivious, crim... | public-domain-review | Feb 1, 2024 | Dorothy Berr | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:26.159038 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/gotham-attucks/"
} |
steamboat-willie | As Loud as a Mouse: Mickey’s Sonic Debut in Steamboat Willie (1928)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Jan 24, 2024
When Steamboat Willie premiered in the autumn of 1928, marking Mickey Mouse’s public debut, rivers were on the American mind. Show Boat had hit Broadway the previous Christmas, its racially integrated cast creating ... | public-domain-review | Jan 24, 2024 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:26.636591 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/steamboat-willie/"
} |
kumanaki-kage | Clear Shadows (1867)
Text by Koto Sadamura
Jan 23, 2024
Silhouette portraits came into fashion in late-nineteenth-century Japan following their popularity in Europe and the United States. They were a form of party entertainment. Partygoers would take turns sitting behind a paper sliding door (shōji) while an enterta... | public-domain-review | Jan 23, 2024 | Koto Sadamura | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:26.991630 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/kumanaki-kage/"
} |
tom-seidmann-freud-hare-tales | Tom Seidmann-Freud’s Book of Hare Stories (1924)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Mar 20, 2024
“Quite often in dreams it is the hare that shoots the sportsman.”—Sigmund Freud, “The Dream-Work”
Hares and rabbits have been known to serve as messengers between the conscious world and those deeper warrens of the mind. In Tom Seidma... | public-domain-review | Mar 20, 2024 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:27.441030 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/tom-seidmann-freud-hare-tales/"
} |
body-as-house-diagram | My Body is a Temple Four-Story House: Analogical Diagram from Tobias Cohen’s Ma’aseh Tuviyah (1708)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Jun 14, 2023
This woodcut diagram, from Tobias Cohen’s Ma’aseh Tuviyah (1708), places the human body and house into analogy. Every organ in the man’s open torso is lettered; each letter matches wi... | public-domain-review | Jun 14, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:28.874195 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/body-as-house-diagram/"
} |
comic-natural-history | The Comic Natural History of the Human Race (1851)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Jun 20, 2023
“Transmigration is held to be very marvelous”, reports H. L. Stephens in The Comic Natural History of the Human Race. And while these “kaleideiscopical” experiences are often attributed to “Hindoos, and other far-off outsiders”, he ... | public-domain-review | Jun 20, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:29.342732 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/comic-natural-history/"
} |
raman-sea | A Distinct Phenomenon in Itself:
C. V. Raman’s Discovery of Why the Sea is Blue (1921)
Text by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Jul 20, 2023
In September 1921, a largely unknown Indian scientist was returning from his first trip overseas where he had attended an international universities congress in Oxford. He had ample tim... | public-domain-review | Jul 20, 2023 | Hugh Aldersey-Williams | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:29.791379 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/raman-sea/"
} |
an-adventure | In the Mind of Marie: A Haunting Encounter in the Gardens of Versailles (1913)
Text by Sasha Archibald
Jun 6, 2023
In 1901, two British women just getting to know each other took a trip to Paris. The day they visited Versailles, things turned strange. They were wandering in the gardens, hoping to find Petit Trianon,... | public-domain-review | Jun 6, 2023 | Sasha Archibald | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:30.274410 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/an-adventure/"
} |
fraktur-folk-art | Fraktur Folk Art (ca. 1750–1820)
Text by Sasha Archibald
Mar 30, 2023
The southeastern corner of what is now Pennsylvania was once home to entire towns of religious dissidents. All had been persecuted in Europe, and sought freedom in the colonies. There were clusters of Mennonites, Moravians, Lutherans, and various ... | public-domain-review | Mar 30, 2023 | Sasha Archibald | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:30.724807 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/fraktur-folk-art/"
} |
hokusai-warriors | Hokusai’s Illustrated Warrior Vanguard of Japan and China (1836)
Text by Koto Sadamura
Jul 19, 2023
Until the age of seventy, nothing I drew was worthy of notice. At seventy-three years, I was somewhat able to fathom the growth of plants and trees, and the structure of birds, animals, insects and fish. —Katsushika H... | public-domain-review | Jul 19, 2023 | Koto Sadamura | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:31.231583 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/hokusai-warriors/"
} |
denishawn-dance-film | Denishawn Dance Film (ca. 1916)
Text by Hunter Dukes
May 30, 2023
“In a word, we dreamed about a school of life”, wrote Ruth St. Denis about founding, with her husband Ted Shawn, the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts. Filmed across two or three summers between 1915 and 1917, according to the New York Publ... | public-domain-review | May 30, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:31.768618 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/denishawn-dance-film/"
} |
punctuation-personified | Punctuation Personified (1824)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Apr 27, 2023
Ev’ry lady in this landHas twenty nails upon each handFive & twenty on hands & feetAnd this is true without deceit.But when the stops were plac’d aright,The real sense was brought to light.
The child protagonist of Punctuation Personified: or, Pointing... | public-domain-review | Apr 27, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:32.289230 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/punctuation-personified/"
} |
san-francisco-calamity | Eyewitness Accounts of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake
Text by Sasha Archibald
May 23, 2023
The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire (1906) was known in the publishing industry as an “instant disaster book”. This genre coalesced partly because there were so many disasters at the turn of the last century: ... | public-domain-review | May 23, 2023 | Sasha Archibald | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:32.784196 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/san-francisco-calamity/"
} |
los-angeles-alligator-farm | Photographs of the Los Angeles Alligator Farm (ca. 1907)
Text by Erica X Eisen
May 11, 2023
From 1907 until its relocation in 1953, the area of Lincoln Heights was home to what the Los Angeles Times dubbed “the city’s most exotic residents”: a thousand-strong collection of alligators that welcomed visitors every day... | public-domain-review | May 11, 2023 | Erica X Eisen | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:33.110256 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/los-angeles-alligator-farm/"
} |
sundial-mottoes | “Though Silent, I Speak”: A Book of Sundial Mottoes (1903)
Text by Sasha Archibald
Apr 25, 2023
When thought needs a muse, it claims an evocative object. Long ago, love found hearts; secrets found keys; discovery found light; change found rivers. For many centuries this list would have had to include time finding su... | public-domain-review | Apr 25, 2023 | Sasha Archibald | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:33.629457 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/sundial-mottoes/"
} |
smillie-smithsonian | The Department of Preparation: Thomas Smillie’s Photographic Survey of the Smithsonian (1890–1913)
Text by Erica X Eisen
Jul 12, 2023
When Thomas William Smillie (1843–1917) was designated “custodian” of the Smithsonian Institution’s photographic “specimens” in 1896 — a position we might now call curator of photogra... | public-domain-review | Jul 12, 2023 | Erica X Eisen | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:33.977832 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/smillie-smithsonian/"
} |
treatise-of-buggs | “Those Disturbers of my Rest”: The First Treatise on Bedbugs (1730)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Jun 28, 2023
Written by John Southall — the godfather of exterminators, known in his day as a “bug destroyer” — A Treatise of Buggs (1730) is the first scientific study of bedbugs. According to its author, this lousy presence wa... | public-domain-review | Jun 28, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:34.494834 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/treatise-of-buggs/"
} |
cranch-new-philosophy | C. P. Cranch’s Very Literal Illustrations of Emerson’s Nature (ca. 1837–39)
Text by Sasha Archibald
Apr 13, 2023
Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813–1892) is remembered for bringing levity to Transcendentalism. At the various gatherings that soldered the movement, the good-looking Cranch played the flute and guitar, lov... | public-domain-review | Apr 13, 2023 | Sasha Archibald | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:35.050155 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/cranch-new-philosophy/"
} |
dentologia | Dentologia: A Poem on the Diseases of the Teeth (1833)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Apr 12, 2023
Dentologia begins seemingly far away from the world of teeth. Invoking Juno and Apollo, the first canto ruminates on how “angelic natures” are revealed “when purified from the stains of mortality”. We gradually realize that the ... | public-domain-review | Apr 12, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:35.372854 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/dentologia/"
} |
peking-opera | Peking Opera Characters (ca. 1900)
Text by Hunter Dukes
May 16, 2023
Of the approximately 360 kinds of theater in China, Peking opera remains the most infamous. Originating in Shanghai rather than Beijing, the style is thought to have become formalized sometime between 1790 and 1860. And yet, the neatness of the Eng... | public-domain-review | May 16, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:35.877824 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/peking-opera/"
} |
verany-cephalopods | Jean Baptiste Vérany’s Chromolithographs of Cephalopods (1851)
Text by Kevin Dann
Apr 27, 2023
The subtitle of Jean Baptiste Vérany’s Mollusques méditeranéens: observès, decrits, figurès et chromolithographies d'après le vivant promised something quite extraordinary for 1851: chromolithographs of living sea creature... | public-domain-review | Apr 27, 2023 | Kevin Dann | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:36.310422 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/verany-cephalopods/"
} |
shy-guy | Shy Guy (1947)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Apr 18, 2023
Before loners, stoners, slackers, geeks, and nerds became recognized misfits of American high-school cinema, there was Phil (played by a young Dick York), the shrinking violet of Shy Guy (1947). The first of many “personal guidance” or “mental hygiene” shorts produced... | public-domain-review | Apr 18, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:36.803786 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/shy-guy/"
} |
blights-of-the-bookish | Blights of the Bookish: An Essay on Diseases Incidental to Literary and Sedentary Persons (1768)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Mar 28, 2023
It was dangerous to be a man of letters in the eighteenth century. All that rumination; such single-minded concentration; countless hours hunched over the escritoire. “Some men are by na... | public-domain-review | Mar 28, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:37.292911 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/blights-of-the-bookish/"
} |
bonnacons | Medieval Illustrations of Bonnacons
Text by Hunter Dukes
May 25, 2023
When it comes to self-defense, skunks and spitting cobras have nothing on the bonnacon. If threatened, it fled. While fleeing, it defecated. Violently. According to Pliny the Elder, the excrement voided the animal’s body with such explosive force ... | public-domain-review | May 25, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:37.775902 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/bonnacons/"
} |
fancy-turning | Specimens of Fancy Turning (1869)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Jun 21, 2023
This early photography book features thirty tipped-in albumen silver prints of geometric designs created on “the hand or foot lathe”. Resembling something between spirograph drawings and textbook diagrams of orbiting electrons, the figures were crea... | public-domain-review | Jun 21, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:38.255316 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/fancy-turning/"
} |
indian-sign-talk | Indian Sign Talk (1893)
Text by Kevin Dann
May 10, 2023
Upon reading Lieutenant Colonel Garrick Mallery’s 1880 appeal for descriptions of “Indian Sign Talk”, Lewis Francis Hadley abandoned his philological research on Quapaw and Ponca languages (he was reputed to know twenty Native tongues) and applied himself to th... | public-domain-review | May 10, 2023 | Kevin Dann | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:38.588782 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/indian-sign-talk/"
} |
manhattans-last-arcadia | Manhattan’s Last Arcadia: Estate Plans from the Index of American Design (1936)
Text by Kevin Dann
Apr 5, 2023
Scattered amongst the 18,257 watercolor, crayon, chalk, charcoal, and color pencil drawings of folk, decorative, and industrial art executed between 1936 and 1942 for the Index of American Design (IAD) are ... | public-domain-review | Apr 5, 2023 | Kevin Dann | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:39.109016 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/manhattans-last-arcadia/"
} |
utsuro-bune | Unidentified Floating Object: Edo Images of Utsuro-bune
Text by Hunter Dukes
Jun 8, 2023
Sometime in the early months of 1803, an alien ship came ashore on the coast of Japan. Fishermen thought it was one of their own and rowed out to tow this object bobbing in the waves. It was not. The vessel looked like a cauldro... | public-domain-review | Jun 8, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:39.784323 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/utsuro-bune/"
} |
nuuttipukki | Season’s Bleatings: Finnish Photographs of the Nuuttipukki (1928)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Nov 28, 2023
A goat thing lurks behind the barn. There are horns and an empty skull, but its fleece looks thieved from a sheep. Where you might expect a tail, there’s only a truss of twigs — a sauna vihta, made for whipping flesh.... | public-domain-review | Nov 28, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:40.768892 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/nuuttipukki/"
} |
unionization-of-central-europe | Divide and Concur: A Radical Plan for Peace in Europe (1920)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Nov 2, 2023
Published in Vienna a year after Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles, Die Unionisierung Mitteleuropas! (The Unionization of Central Europe!) anticipated not only the Second World War but also the coming European Union. ... | public-domain-review | Nov 2, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:41.225710 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/unionization-of-central-europe/"
} |
ikkyu-in-hell | Ikkyū in Hell: Skeletons (1692)
Text by Erica X Eisen
Oct 31, 2023
“Ikkyū is my true heir, but his ways are wild”: these words, uttered by the fourteenth-century Zen master Kasō, may seem like something of an understatement to those acquainted with his chosen successor. Legends about Ikkyū abound to this day, making... | public-domain-review | Oct 31, 2023 | Erica X Eisen | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:41.753073 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/ikkyu-in-hell/"
} |
fixed-stars | Behold the Nebulous Smear:
‘Abd al-Rahmān al-Sūfī’s Illustrated Book of Fixed Stars (ca. 1430)
Text by Brad Fox
Sep 21, 2023
In 349 AH (960–61 AD) the Persian astronomer ‘Abd al-Rahmān al-Sūfī was visiting the court of Būyid caliph ‘Adud al-Dawlah in Isfahan. Shortly after his arrival, another learned gentleman know... | public-domain-review | Sep 21, 2023 | Brad Fo | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:42.256407 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/fixed-stars/"
} |
frankenstein-monster-reading-list | Humanity 101: The Syllabus of Frankenstein's Monster
Text by Hunter Dukes
Nov 8, 2023
Hiding in an unused structure connected to a cottage, Frankenstein’s monster becomes transfixed by the written word. Through a chink in the wall, he watches Felix read to his foreign lover and teach her how to speak his language, a... | public-domain-review | Nov 8, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:42.456609 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/frankenstein-monster-reading-list/"
} |
arbeid-van-mars | The Works of Mars (1671)
Text by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Sep 7, 2023
It is often our mightiest projects that most obviously betray the degree of our insecurity. The construction of fortifications, for instance . . .—W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz (2001)
What is the peculiar appeal of military architecture? Whether Norman ... | public-domain-review | Sep 7, 2023 | Hugh Aldersey-Williams | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:42.939065 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/arbeid-van-mars/"
} |
fire-tests-with-textiles | Your Flannelette Cure: Fire Tests with Textiles (1910)
Text by Sasha Archibald
Oct 19, 2023
Ballerinas on fire fascinated Victorians. It was an erotic, potent image, the subject of numerous prints: dewy, ethereal virgins licked by flames. But it was also a real thing, in that actual ballerinas caught fire on stage a... | public-domain-review | Oct 19, 2023 | Sasha Archibald | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:43.409286 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/fire-tests-with-textiles/"
} |
madame-b-album | The “Madame B Album” (ca. 1870s)
Text by Sasha Archibald
Sep 6, 2023
The “Madame B Album” was not made for public viewing, though the artist spared no care on its design. The book is a leatherbound volume of some hundred photocollages. Victorians enjoyed their photos in myriad ways — trading, posing, and arranging, ... | public-domain-review | Sep 6, 2023 | Sasha Archibald | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:43.871728 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/madame-b-album/"
} |
rabot-photographs-of-the-arctic | Masters of the Ice: Charles Rabot’s Arctic Photographs (ca. 1881)
Text by Erica X Eisen
Jan 9, 2024
“They are so beautiful, so magnificent, those deathly solitudes, so strange in their fleeting finery of brilliant colors, that they always leave one with a burning desire to see them again”, Charles Rabot wrote in 189... | public-domain-review | Jan 9, 2024 | Erica X Eisen | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:44.377736 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/rabot-photographs-of-the-arctic/"
} |
the-landlords-game | The Landlord's Game: Lizzie Magie and Monopoly's Anti-Capitalist Origins (1903)
Text by Sasha Archibald
Dec 21, 2023
There are few cases of creative and intellectual theft more egregious than the origins of the billion-dollar grossing Monopoly. The short version: a brilliant woman economist invented an anti-capitali... | public-domain-review | Dec 21, 2023 | Sasha Archibald | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:44.693869 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-landlords-game/"
} |
paper-lantern-catalogue | Chromolithographs of Paper Lanterns (ca. 1880)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Nov 9, 2023
The chromolithographs collected below, from a late-nineteenth-century catalog published in Baden-Württemberg, advertise paper lanterns in the style of those still carried during St. Martin’s Day celebrations. They speak perhaps to the ch... | public-domain-review | Nov 9, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:45.037396 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/paper-lantern-catalogue/"
} |
history-of-the-negro-race-in-america | George Washington Williams’ History of the Negro Race in America (1882–83)
Text by Dorothy Berry
Sep 12, 2023
George Washington Williams (1849–1891) lived the sort of picaresque life not often imagined possible for nineteenth-century African Americans. At the age of fourteen he falsified an identity and joined the U... | public-domain-review | Sep 12, 2023 | Dorothy Berr | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:45.532317 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/history-of-the-negro-race-in-america/"
} |
pantographia | Pantographia: A Specimen Book of All the Alphabets Known on Earth (1799)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Oct 10, 2023
There's a radical tradition in Jewish mysticism that thinks we are missing a letter of the alphabet. In our current cosmic cycle, the letter is either invisible, or present to our eyes in a faulty, corrupted fo... | public-domain-review | Oct 10, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:46.012461 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/pantographia/"
} |
aftershock-of-the-new | Aftershock of the New: Woodblock Prints of Post-Disaster Tokyo (1928–32)
Text by Erica X Eisen
Oct 17, 2023
The shockwave struck at lunchtime. Witnesses would later state that tremors rocked Tokyo for ten full minutes, igniting fires across the city as lit stoves and cooking oil were thrown together in the chaos of ... | public-domain-review | Oct 17, 2023 | Erica X Eisen | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:46.507585 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/aftershock-of-the-new/"
} |
books-fatal-to-their-authors | Books Fatal to Their Authors (1895)
Text by Sasha Archibald
Jan 4, 2024
At the very end of P.H. Ditchfield’s 1895 compendium Books Fatal to Their Authors, the priest, historian, and prolific author argues that a just society would create a refuge specifically for aging writers — a place where they can live in peace,... | public-domain-review | Jan 4, 2024 | Sasha Archibald | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:46.929292 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/books-fatal-to-their-authors/"
} |
coney-island-at-night | Coney Island at Night (1905)
Text by Adam Green
Nov 21, 2023
Before the cotton-candy and mechanical thrills, Coney Island was known for its thriving rabbit population — hence the name, the Dutch for rabbit being konijn: or so goes one of numerous etymologies for the area. Earlier the Lenape had named it Narrioch, me... | public-domain-review | Nov 21, 2023 | Adam Green | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:47.379675 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/coney-island-at-night/"
} |
shadows | Charles H. Bennett’s Shadows (ca. 1856)
Text by Kevin Dann
Oct 3, 2023
“Coming events cast their shadows before”, reads the caption for Charles H. Bennett’s frontispiece; it shows a young child dipping into a pot of preserves as a raised hand foreshadows punishment. The twenty-two other portraits in Shadows (1856) p... | public-domain-review | Oct 3, 2023 | Kevin Dann | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:47.865258 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/shadows/"
} |
selection-of-whisk-ferns | A Careful Selection of Whisk Ferns (1837)
Text by Erica X Eisen
Sep 19, 2023
Of the aesthetic imperfections to be avoided by any serious practitioner, the 1989 guide Classic Bonsai of Japan lists kuruma-eda (“branches that originate from a single point”) and karami-eda (“branches . . . whose lines cross each other”)... | public-domain-review | Sep 19, 2023 | Erica X Eisen | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:48.331575 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/selection-of-whisk-ferns/"
} |
recueil-de-la-diversite-des-habits | The World's First Costume Book: François Desprez's Collection of Various Clothing Styles (1562)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Dec 6, 2023
These woodcuts by François Desprez come from 1562’s Recueil de la diversité des habits (whose full title translates as “a collection of the various styles of clothing presently worn in the... | public-domain-review | Dec 6, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:48.851757 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/recueil-de-la-diversite-des-habits/"
} |
dictionary-of-modern-slang | A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words (1860)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Sep 26, 2023
Could you have learnt to patter flash the argot of costermongers, hawking sanguinary James and other belly-timber? You might recognize these types by their Newgate knockers, those aggerawators tucked behind a lug on the nud... | public-domain-review | Sep 26, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:49.326018 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/dictionary-of-modern-slang/"
} |
man-and-his-desire | Modernity in the Rainforest: Man and his Desire (1917)
Text by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Nov 16, 2023
Where do you go to find the modern? For the French composer Darius Milhaud, the answer would lie in the rainforest of Brazil. In January 1917, having agreed to act as secretary for the poet Paul Claudel, who had just b... | public-domain-review | Nov 16, 2023 | Hugh Aldersey-Williams | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:49.798130 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/man-and-his-desire/"
} |
kollwitz-peasants-war | Käthe Kollwitz’s Peasants’ War Series (ca. 1901–1908)
Text by Sasha Archibald
Oct 5, 2023
The German Peasants’ War of the sixteenth century might seem an unlikely topic for a young artist. The War was fought three centuries before the artist in question, Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945), was born, and it was not a triumph... | public-domain-review | Oct 5, 2023 | Sasha Archibald | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:50.318415 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/kollwitz-peasants-war/"
} |
christmas-garland | Wreathed in Pastiche: Max Beerbohm’s Christmas Garland (1912)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Nov 30, 2023
In a 1903 letter to E. F. Spence, the critic, artist, and humorist Max Beerbohm set forth a theory of caricature:
When I draw a man, I am concerned simply and solely with the physical aspect of him. I don’t bother for one... | public-domain-review | Nov 30, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:50.787087 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/christmas-garland/"
} |
the-book-of-halloween | A Melting Cauldron: The Book of Hallowe’en (1919)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Oct 24, 2023
“How many times the Church has decanted the new wine of Christianity into the old bottles of heathendom”, writes Ruth Edna Kelley at the outset of The Book of Hallowe’en (1919), considered the first book-length history of this celebr... | public-domain-review | Oct 24, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:51.263104 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-book-of-halloween/"
} |
john-h-white-documerica | John H. White’s Photographs of Black Chicago for DOCUMERICA (1973–74)
Text by Erica X Eisen
Feb 1, 2023
It’s hard not to read John H. White’s DOCUMERICA series as a love letter to Black Chicago. Whether capturing protesters or checkers players, concerts or chores, White’s work feels animated by a wonder and curiosit... | public-domain-review | Feb 1, 2023 | Erica X Eisen | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:52.280425 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/john-h-white-documerica/"
} |
microscopic-delights | Martin Frobenius Ledermüller’s Microscopic Delights (1759–63)
Text by Kevin Dann
Mar 22, 2023
Novel and astonishing as they may have been for Enlightenment readers, it is difficult for us to comprehend how the magnifications of lice, fleas, houseflies, and other vermin might have been conceived as amusements for the... | public-domain-review | Mar 22, 2023 | Kevin Dann | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:52.773845 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/microscopic-delights/"
} |
mighty-mikko | Mighty Mikko: A Book of Finnish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales (1922)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Dec 6, 2022
With the assistance of his Finnish speaking friend Lydia Tulonen, Parker Hoysted Fillmore (1878–1944) wandered “through the byways of Finnish folklore”, glossing his volume Mighty Mikko as “the traveler’s pack I have b... | public-domain-review | Dec 6, 2022 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:53.295874 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/mighty-mikko/"
} |
munsell-atlas | Atlas of the Munsell Color System (1915)
Text by Kevin Dann
Mar 7, 2023
Before publishing his Atlas in 1915, painter and art teacher Albert Henry Munsell (1858–1918) had spent decades seeking to compress the totality of human color experience into a simple and elegant three-dimensional graphical model. In 1879, afte... | public-domain-review | Mar 7, 2023 | Kevin Dann | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:53.824005 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/munsell-atlas/"
} |
march-of-the-intellect | “March of Intellect” Cartoons (1828–29)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Mar 2, 2023
What did the future look like in 1820s Britain? Poking fun at liberal ambitions for education reform, the rapid pace of industrialization, and a fashionable interest in applied knowledge, William Heath’s March of Intellect series offered a sati... | public-domain-review | Mar 2, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:54.452023 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/march-of-the-intellect/"
} |
moseley-coffee | A Treatise Concerning the Properties and Effects of Coffee (1792)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Feb 2, 2023
How did coffee become so popular in the Middle East, turning the Yemeni port city of Mokha into a global marketplace of beans for nearly three centuries? Benjamin Moseley, eighteenth-century physician and early anti-va... | public-domain-review | Feb 2, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:54.890301 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/moseley-coffee/"
} |
scare-fox | Art Brut: The Scare-Fox (1910)
Text by Kevin Dann
Jan 10, 2023
Uncannily resembling an early work of outsider art, Head Gamekeeper D. Green’s “scare-fox” was an altogether utilitarian contraption, devised to send foxes fleeing from his Herefordshire game preserve’s pheasant field. Shutters driven by a clockwork mech... | public-domain-review | Jan 10, 2023 | Kevin Dann | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:55.087127 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/scare-fox/"
} |
dool-hoff | Dool-Hoff: A Dutch Maze with New Jerusalem at its Centre (1705)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Feb 21, 2023
In his fifth-century commentary on Ezekiel’s vision of New Jerusalem, Jerome quotes the Aeneid, likening the path of salvation to a minotaur’s maze: “‘As once in lofty Crete the labyrinth is said to have had a route wov... | public-domain-review | Feb 21, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:55.549079 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/dool-hoff/"
} |
fechtbucher | Battles of the Sexes: Duels between Women and Men in 1400s Fechtbücher
Text by Hunter Dukes
Jan 18, 2023
Around the year 1430, illustrated German-language manuscripts began to depict the art of Zweikampf: dueling, or, literally, a battle of two. Known as “fight books” (Fechtbücher), these manuals developed out of a ... | public-domain-review | Jan 18, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:56.005079 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/fechtbucher/"
} |
frost-flowers | Frost Flowers on the Windows (1899)
Text by Kevin Dann
Jan 19, 2023
In Frost Flowers on the Windows, expatriate Swedish actor, theater producer, and writer Albert Alberg (1838–1924) leads us on a fin-de-siècle walkabout across Chicago. His goal is to document a “New, Truly Great Discovery”: the extraordinary power o... | public-domain-review | Jan 19, 2023 | Kevin Dann | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:56.547358 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/frost-flowers/"
} |
mayer-medusae | Floating Phantoms: A. G. Mayer’s Medusae of the World (1910)
Text by Kevin Dann
Nov 15, 2022
There is something inevitable about Alfred Goldsborough Mayer’s attraction to jellyfish. Like Ernst Haeckel before him, Mayer could never “remain insensible to the rare grace of form and delicate beauty of color of these cre... | public-domain-review | Nov 15, 2022 | Kevin Dann | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:57.025938 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/mayer-medusae/"
} |
tanzmasken | The Tanzmasken of Lavinia Schulz and Walter Holdt (ca. 1924)
Text by Sasha Archibald
Nov 22, 2022
In January 1924, a German studio photographer of some status, Minya Diéz-Dührkoop, took portraits of a young avant-garde artist couple, Lavinia Schulz (1896–1924) and her husband Walter Holdt (1899–1924). The photos are... | public-domain-review | Nov 22, 2022 | Sasha Archibald | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:57.559982 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/tanzmasken/"
} |
book-of-bread | The Book of Bread (1903)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Jan 5, 2023
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”, writes Owen Simmons at the outset of The Book of Bread (1903), a work he hopes will definitively establish “the link between the bakery and the laboratory” and speak to “the needs of the baker and of the miller”. And... | public-domain-review | Jan 5, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:58.031132 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/book-of-bread/"
} |
yaggy-geographical-maps | Levi Walter Yaggy’s Geographical Maps and Charts (1887/93)
Text by Sasha Archibald
Feb 15, 2023
Levi Walter Yaggy’s Geographical Study (1887) unpacks like a matryoshka doll. The experience begins with a heavy wood box, outfitted with leather straps and brass clasps, inside of which is a sheaf of complex maps and cha... | public-domain-review | Feb 15, 2023 | Sasha Archibald | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:58.561538 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/yaggy-geographical-maps/"
} |
extinct-animals | A Bestiary of Loss
Nov 30, 2022
According to many ecologists, we are in the midst of a new mass extinction event. And unlike any other in the Earth’s 4.54 billion year history, this one is caused by a single species of primate: humans. Of course, the death of species is a natural part of evolution, but fuzzy estima... | public-domain-review | Nov 30, 2022 | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:58.966305 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/extinct-animals/"
} | |
ensor-sins | James Ensor, The Deadly Sins (ca. 1904)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Jan 24, 2023
Perhaps no modern artist better exemplified the charge issued by Baudelaire in his 1862 essay “Painters and etchers” — “etching is a profound and dangerous art, filled with treachery, which reveals the faults of an artist’s mind as clearly as ... | public-domain-review | Jan 24, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:59.440659 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/ensor-sins/"
} |
gay-trivia | A Pantomime and Masquerade: Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Nov 17, 2022
“I have passed all my days in London”, boasted Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth in 1801, and “formed as many and intense local attachments, as any of you mountaineers can have done with dead na... | public-domain-review | Nov 17, 2022 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:38:59.898927 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/gay-trivia/"
} |
basohli-beetle-paintings | Beetle Carapaces in Basohli Miniature Paintings (ca. 1660–1700)
Text by Erica X Eisen
Mar 16, 2023
In his fourteenth-century treatise on gemology, the Rajasthani scientist Ṭhakkura Pherū tracks the origins of precious stones back to a trip taken by the demon Bala to the heavens:
He was requested by the gods: “Become... | public-domain-review | Mar 16, 2023 | Erica X Eisen | collection | 2024-05-01T21:39:00.450835 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/basohli-beetle-paintings/"
} |
concealing-coloration | Many-Colored Misdirection: Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (1909)
Text by Kevin Dann
Feb 7, 2023
When first looking upon the untitled frontispiece of Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (1909), one is not quite sure what the kaleidoscope of color represents. Turning the page to find the title “Pe... | public-domain-review | Feb 7, 2023 | Kevin Dann | collection | 2024-05-01T21:39:00.929144 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/concealing-coloration/"
} |
the-slant-book | Downhill from Here: The Slant Book (1910)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Feb 16, 2023
Jack broke his crown falling down the hill and Jill tumbled after. But Bobby, the child protagonist from Peter Newell’s The Slant Book (1910), careens on his baby carriage with so much momentum that he disrupts all aspects of society. Let go... | public-domain-review | Feb 16, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:39:01.404458 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-slant-book/"
} |
scatalogic-rites | Law and Ordure: Scatalogic Rites of All Nations (1891)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Feb 28, 2023
No matter how “repellent” the subject matter of this book, John Gregory Bourke (1846–1896) believed it to be “none the less deserving of the profoundest consideration”. Marked as “not for general perusal”, its topic is the use o... | public-domain-review | Feb 28, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:39:01.960355 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/scatalogic-rites/"
} |
crane-months | The Procession of the Months (ca. 1889)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Jan 3, 2023
While others celebrated New Year’s Eve, Walter Crane (1845–1915) mourned December’s passing. Honeymooning in Rome as 1872 drew to a close, the young artist found himself contemplating Shelley’s Dirge for the Year (1821): “January gray is here, ... | public-domain-review | Jan 3, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:39:02.413645 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/crane-months/"
} |
solar-system-quilt | Ellen Harding Baker's “Solar System” Quilt (1876–ca. 1883)
Dec 7, 2022
Two years after a naked-eye comet pierced the blanket of night in the spring of 1874, Ellen Harding Baker (1847–1886) began a near decade-long project to bring the stars farther down to Earth: an appliqué quilt depicting the solar system, comple... | public-domain-review | Dec 7, 2022 | collection | 2024-05-01T21:39:02.905059 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/solar-system-quilt/"
} | |
phallic-tree-worship | Cultus Arborum: A Descriptive Account of Phallic Tree Worship (1890)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Mar 14, 2023
There are few of the works of nature that combine so many and so varied charms and beauties as a forest; that whether considered generally or particularly, whether as a grand geographical feature of a country or as... | public-domain-review | Mar 14, 2023 | Hunter Dukes | collection | 2024-05-01T21:39:03.353462 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/phallic-tree-worship/"
} |
gertie-the-dinosaur-1914 | Gertie The Dinosaur (1914)
Aug 1, 2011
Gertie the Dinosaur is a 1914 American animated short film by Winsor McCay. Although not the first animated film, as is sometimes thought, it was the first cartoon to feature a character with an appealing personality. The appearance of a true character distinguished it from ea... | public-domain-review | Aug 1, 2011 | collection | 2024-05-01T21:39:04.112817 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/gertie-the-dinosaur-1914/"
} | |
halloween-postcards | Halloween Postcards, ca. 1900–1920
Oct 29, 2011
Halloween and picture postcards have a shared history, and both captured the anglophone imagination at the turn of the twentieth century. As the October 31st festival began to emerge in its modern guise thanks, in part, to an influx of immigrants from the British Isle... | public-domain-review | Oct 29, 2011 | collection | 2024-05-01T21:39:05.103133 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/halloween-postcards/"
} | |
general-pershing-march-imperial-marimba-band-1918 | General Pershing March - Imperial Marimba Band (1918)
Oct 5, 2011
A rousing march composed by the Vandersloot Publishing Company in honour of General "Black Jack" Pershing who led American troops in World War One. | public-domain-review | Oct 5, 2011 | collection | 2024-05-01T21:39:05.529292 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/general-pershing-march-imperial-marimba-band-1918/"
} | |
maps-from-geographicus | Maps from Geographicus
Sep 22, 2011
In March 2011, Geographicus Rare Antique Maps, a specialist dealer in fine and rare antiquarian cartography and historic maps, donated their collection of over 2000 digital images to Wikimedia Commons. Here is just a small selection of a really great collection. Explore more, and... | public-domain-review | Sep 22, 2011 | collection | 2024-05-01T21:39:06.000819 | {
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/maps-from-geographicus/"
} |
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