3 Free eBooks - October 2012

The Internet is chock full of good reads…and many of them are free. I’m going to start a monthly post highlighting three book length items. In some ways the post is similar to the weekly ‘Gleanings’ in that the items are found as part of my normal continuous learning habits; the items are different because they are longer, have more depth, and sometimes were published as books previously (sometimes long enough ago that they must be read with their vintage in mind). 

• Hibberd, Shirley; Hulme, F. Edward. Familiar Garden Flowers. London: Cassell; 1879. Available from: http://archive.org/details/cu31924051745945 - Note the date. Just as in the Egyptian Birds book, the color prints are the draw for this book. How many of the flowers do you recognize? It is surprising how many are still ‘familiar’ to us. I found that I spent more time on the ones I didn’t recognize - trying to figure out why they had fallen out of popularity (or maybe just never became ‘familiar’ in North America). Looking the puzzling ones in Wikipedia sometimes provides an explanation.
• Irwig L, Irwig J, Trevena L, et al. Smart Health Choices: Making Sense of Health Advice. London: Hammersmith Press; 2008. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK63638/ - This book provides a strategy to enable meaningful conversations with your healthcare providers. Chapter 5 is the keystone of the book (entitled Smart Health Choice Essentials). The “Useful sources of health advice” section right before the glossary points to databases and websites that provide current information about treatments as well.
• Whimper, Charles. Egyptian birds for the most part seen in the Nile Valley. London: A. and C. Black; 1909. Available from: http://archive.org/details/egyptianbirdsfor00whym - Note the date - well before a lot of excavation and the dam at Aswan. The colored pictures are what make this book worth the look. They are well labeled on the opposite page and include the surroundings. I particularly liked when the author included the hieroglyph or the bird as depicted in ancient Egyptian art. 

History of Botanical Print Making - Online Examples

Botanical prints have been popular since the beginning of books. They were intended to be educational and often show dissections of flowers or seed pods. They are often beautiful works of art as well.

Many of these old books have been scanned and are accessible via the Internet. I’ve created a time ordered sequence below and pointed to where you can find the whole book of similar prints.

Published in 1484, Peter Schoeffer’s Herbarius latinus contains simple drawings like on the right. The drawings clearly could not be used by themselves to identify a plant. This book was created not that long after the printing press became more widely used (i.e. the Gutenberg Bible was made in the 1450s).

In 1487, Hamsen Schonsperger published Gart der Gesundheit. An example showing an Iris is on the left; the color is rather primitive.  The images are embedded with the text rather than being on separate pages.

Hieronymus Brunschwig’s Das Distilierbuoch came in 1521. It has some plain drawings and some colored. The plain drawings show more detail than earlier drawings although some parts seem stylized rather than reflecting of reality as shown in the grape vine representation on the right. This book also include manufacturing type diagrams...it is a 'how to' book.

In 1546, Kreüter Buch, darin Underscheid, Würckung und Namen der Kreüter so in Deutschen Landen wachsen by Hieronymus Bock was published. The strawberries are easily recognizable. The color is a little better than in the 1400s example.

Skipping ahead to 1788 when Joseph Gaertner published De frvctibvs et seminibvs plantarvm the attention to detail had increased even more. 

In 1805, William Hooker published 2 volumes of The paradisus londinensis:or coloured figures of plants cultivated in the vicinity of the metropolis with color representations. While these volumes were focused on plants near London - the 1800s were a time of plant exploration around the globe and the botanical prints of the era made those discoveries more widely known with their realistic portrayals.

In 1818, William Jackson Hooker published 2 volumes of Musci exotici - with renditions of mosses. 

The 2 volume Florae Columbiae by Hermann Karsten was published in 1869. 

Medizinal Pflanzen was published in 4 volumes in 1887. I picked the dandelion print for the example from this book (on the right). Note the way the illustrator sought to fit as much as possible about the plant onto a single page.

In 1904, Kunstformen der Natur was published by Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel. This book has a wide range of prints, not just botanical. The one of pitcher plant is shown at the left. 

In 1907, Alfred  Cogniaux published the many volumes of Dictionnaire iconographique des orchidees. The prints are lovely and grouped by the classification of orchids at the time. My favorite orchids are the slipper-like ones.

This is just a small sample of what is available. The two main repositories that I’ve used are Botanicus and the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Both have many more volumes of botanical prints than I've shown here and I encourage you to browse through them. Both repositories have a similar online viewing design. The frame along the left side of the book browsing window generally shows which pages have an illustration (marked 'illustration' or 'plate' or 'tab', for example) so it is possible to skip to the pages that include prints.

Enjoy!

Quote of the Day - 03/05/2012

Beautifully illustrated books were prized possessions at the courts of Islamic rulers, and during the 15th century Herat (in modern day northwestern Afghanistan) became the center of book production. - Nicola Barber in Islamic Art & Culture (World Art & Culture)

~~~~~

It is easy to lose historical perspective in the bombardment of current news. Then a single sentence prompts some quick research. This was such a sentence for me.

Found in a book for late elementary school children, it reminded me of the different perception the west has had of Persia and Afghanistan. Now our perception is of religious fanatics and isolationists - a people that do not want to move toward a future that is like the West. We forget that while knowledge bled away in Europe after Rome fell, the Middle East and Islamic world retained and embellished the legacy so that it was available to filter back as the foundation for the European Renaissance.

Can we develop a vision of the future where the diversity in the world can be a positive element rather than a source of conflict and atrocities?

Quote of the Day - 1/26/2012

WHEN all the panes are hung with frost,
Wild wizard-work of silver lace,

I draw my sofa on the rug
Before the ancient chimney-place.

(Poems Of Thomas Bailey Aldrich)

~~~~~

When Aldrich published these lines in the 1880s, fireplaces were a major source of heat in the home. Now our houses are heated in other ways primarily but the majority of houses are still built with fireplaces. Maybe the rationale is articulated by this poem. When we visualize a ‘cozy place’ on a cold winter’s day/night, there is almost always a fireplace in the picture. Maybe the sofa is replaced by a wing back chair or a rocking chair. Maybe there is a footstool or a cuddly quilt. Is there a cat or dog with you? What about a good book/eReader….or is the television on? Next time there is frost…’wild wizard-work of silver lace’… make your ‘cozy place’ a reality and then enjoy.

The book is also available to read online at American Verse Project at the University of Michigan http://quod.lib.umich.edu/a/amverse/.