One of the best things about living in the future, as I refer to the 21st Century, is access to information that has come before. And I in my feminist way, of course, am referring to the bits and pieces of daily life that get lost along the way to posterity, notoriety, and history… the daily stuff of the lives of families, women and children.
I love being able to flip through the pages of a catalog or a Ladies Publication from 100 to 150 years ago. These acts give me a sense of connectedness to the culture of my foremothers. My maternal grandmother was born in 1883. She began having children in 1910 with the birth of my Uncle Carl. The last of those children, my Aunt Alice, passed away early in September of the year at the age of 92.
How on Earth can I convey the sense of connectedness and continuity of family to my 4-year-old grand daughters when the generations in my part of the family tend toward the long side?
I can read to them from children’s literature of the time when my mother was being read to by her mother, 100 years ago. My mother was born in 1914.
This morning I surfed on over to archive.org and found A Book of Cheerful Cats. I downloaded a PDF of this delightfully illustrated tome to read to the twins when they visit. I will also print out copies to color, cut, glue, glitter and with which to generally have fun.
Somehow I find the search for images from other times and childhoods to be relaxing and rewarding. When I was little I would look through my mother’s tattered memorabilia from her childhood. I was the fifth kid of my mom’s who pawed through her stuff, and it was worse for the wear. While the tactile experience is gone, the rich content of books from those times, minus the allergy inducing dust and mildew, is out there waiting for new generations of family and rainy or snowy afternoons.
Dragon Flies and Fairies for Wordless Wednesday
Scientific Illustration
Wordless Wednesday was going to just be this page from an out of copyright journal article, Packard, A. S. The Dragon-Fly (August 1, 1867) The American Naturalist, Volume 1., which I thought was really cool. since I decided to switch to the Balance child theme for the Genesis framework for WordPress and thus had to say goodbye to my background of itty bitty blue dragon flies.
Children’s Book Illustration
But while looking for more images of dragon flies I found this wonderful illustration by Cecile Walton from Polish Fairy Tales. The book is a translation by Maude Ashurst Biggs of the work of Antoni Józef Gliński and is out of copyright. It is called, The Fairies Weave a Rug.
I love that the colors and patterns reflect a real Polish folk art pallet.
More Victorian-era "Eastern" Graphics
Yesterday I found some Japanese designs from 1860, today I’m sharing some 1890s illustrations that are definitely western interpretations of eastern subjects. These two graphics, that I have altered for my purposes, are from a book entitled Gospel of Buddha published in 1894 and reprinted in 1917.
The lotus and ivy frame appeared on a chapter title page with another image and two text boxes, but I think the juxtaposition of English ivy with the lotus imagery from Buddhist thought and the cute little songbirds that are everywhere in popular late Victorian and turn of the century drawings is so interesting that I wanted to use the image by itself. So here it is.
I have no idea what mermaids have to do with the Buddha, I think absolutely nothing other than in the mind of the illustrator, but I love the drawing’s whimsy.
I hate to think of the work of the graphic artists who were so creative being lost, and with the digitization of print materials on archive.org and companion projects there is a wealth of material that can be recycled in a perfectly legal fashion while bringing the efforts of past generations to the future. I like to give credit where credit is due and this material was originally drawn by O. Kopetzky. The featured image that appears on the main blog page with a snippet of this post is also by Kopetzky. It is good karma to acknowledge creators, doesn’t it? I mean this is a work about the Buddha after all.
Cool. Huh?