mucholderthen:

Elizabeth Blackwell
1701-1785
A Curious Herbal

Notable both for its beautiful illustrations of medicinal plants and for the unusual circumstances of its creation.

Elizabeth Blackwell was a Scottish botanical illustrator and author who was best known as both the artist and engraver for the plates of “A Curious Herbal”, published between 1737 and 1739. The book illustrated many odd-looking and unknown plants from the New World, and was designed as a reference work on medicinal plants for the use of physicians and apothecaries.

Blackwell undertook this ambitious project to raise money to pay her husband’s debts and release him from debtor’s prison. She drew, engraved, and colored the illustrations herself, mostly using plant specimens from the Chelsea Physic Garden in London.

It was an artistic, scientific and commercial enterprise unprecedented for a woman of her time.

[ source:  Turning the Pages - National Library of Medicine ]

(via dendroica)

heaveninawildflower:

May page from ‘The Labours of the Months’ a Flemish Book of Hours  (First half of the 16th century).

Simon Bening (circa 1483/1484–1561).

Wikimedia.

heaveninawildflower:

n149_w1150 by BioDivLibrary on Flickr.

Favourite flowers of garden and greenhouse /.
London and New York :Frederick Warne co.,1896-97..

sailorgil:

The Bellerophon, Plymouth Sound (Vignette), engraved by E. Goodall published 1836

peashooter85:

Cats Dueling by Susan Herbert

(via igotsomechildcats)

renartbd:

Virginia Woolf

(via mizenscen)

geisterseher:

Rupert Hughes, The Real New York (1904) Illustrations by Henry Mayer

(Source: openlibrary.org, via heaveninawildflower)

zombienormal:

Karl Boehmer, Jugend magazine, 1923.

Via.

vintagesevensisters:

Bryn Mawr 1902 Calendar. Illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green, and Ellen Wetherald Ahrens. 

(Nudelman Rare Books)

(via fuckyeahvintageillustration)

From Again! by Emily Gravett

Bought this book for Sant Jordi’s Day. It is gorgeous, funny and very cute. I’m in love with little Cedric the Dragon!

(Source: librarymice.com)

(Source: unnaturalist, via igotsomechildcats)

auspiciousplatypus:

The frontispiece to The Accidents of Youth (1819), a book of short stories and wonderful engravings aimed at keeping young people out of trouble and “calculated to improve the moral conduct of children”.

See more here: http://publicdomainreview.org/2013/04/15/the-accidents-of-youth-1819

(via nitescence)

aleyma:

Study of a delphinium, hawk-moth, and caddis fly. (source).

(via heaveninawildflower)

yama-bato:

Gothic architecture (1742)

Author: Langley, Batty
Subject: Architecture; Architecture, Gothic; Architecture, English; Architecture
Publisher: London : Printed for I. & J. Taylor, at the Architectural Library, Holborn
Year: 1742

designersof:

check out more of my illustrations here

(via margueritemoulin)