Machine Shop
From Undocumented sources
Growing up in 1950's Detroit, I developed some respect for those milling machines used to shape metal into precise shapes. This picture shows a room in a factory that made machine shop equipment, as well as a circular saw blade that was produced by a machine shop. Also, there's a picture from an old book of poems, that I have used before in my triangle experiments.
Solitude and Subway
From John Lane Co., The International Studio June 1915 and Munn & Co., Scientific American, July 10, 1915;
(Click on image to enlarge) Link1, Link2 to originals
Going through creative angst as I experiment with different techniques. Floundering a bit.
On the left is Irish artist William Orpen's painting titled "Solitude" from a 1915 arts magazine and a 1902 Scientific American article about building New York subway. Borders of both pieces are composed of elements from the ATF Type Specimen book.
Nostra-Bob-Us
More experiments with the ambiguous phrasing and solemn tone of the fortune-teller.
A digital reprint of the 19th century novel Anne of Green Gables features an unusual set of illustrations, produced by screenshots from a 1985 dramatization of the story and then modified by the ever-present "Anonymous" with digital manipulation. Although I do intense digital manipulations on my images, I grumbled at these manipulations -- especially the use of the ragged edge framing. Makes me question whether I'm doing the right thing on my manipulations. Text is another woo-woo Tarot Card imitation, set in a font called AddJazz. I'm told that "bosom friend" is the term used in the novel, along with "kindred spirit."
(Click on image to enlarge)
Links: Link1
Sporty Electro-girl, Old monk, and Hand-on-Hip Woman
From Robbins & Myers, Electric fans for alternating and direct current circuits, non-oscillating, oscillating, ceiling and ventilating fans, 1929; Unknown, Kunkel's Musical Review, June 1882; Jacques Arogo, Ouevres Illustrees de Jacques Arago, 1856.
Click on image to enlarge) Link1; Link2 and Link3 to originals
"The greatest factor to health, happiness, and long life is the stimulation of fresh, pure air," says the Robbins & Myers, electric fan manufacturer. The cover of its 1929 trade catalog, the central image here, shows a swimsuited woman at the beach, with Cubist sailboats behind her. To her left is a picture from an advertisement in an 1882 music periodical which shows a wandering monk pondering a bottle of "St. Jacob's Oil," a popular quack liniment for curing all manner of aches and pains. To her right is an illustration from a collection of the writings of French travel writer and artist Jacques Arago, from the French public domain site Gallica. It illustrates a story called "Pujol: Chef de Miqueletes, ou La Catalogne (1808-1814)." The Miqueletes were a Catalan militia (sometime allegedly a bandit band), Pujol was its leader during Napoleonic times.
Plain Concrete Floors and Magic Shingles
From Keystone Roofing Co., The magic touch of Preston shingles, c. 1920; and Master Builders Co., Plain talk about concrete floors., c. 1928.
(Click on image to enlarge) Link1 and Link2 to originals
Top is a graphic logo from the Keystone Roofing brochure, showing a workman laying floor inside a round logo (turned oval by my post-processing distortion.) Below that is an illustration of the company's roofs on pleasant suburban homes. In the background are three samples of concrete wear, from the "Plain Talk" trade catalog. (The top sample is the company's product, the two lower are competitors and show much more deterioration.) The whole image is framed from a Laurel border in the 1900 ATF Type Speciment book.
Agriculture in India and Mayan Ceremony
From M.S. Randhawa, A History of Agriculture in India, Vol. I, 1980 and The Archaelogical Institute of America, Art and Archaeology, November, 1915
(Click on image to enlarge) Link1 and Link2
to originals
In the foreground, from a history of Indian Agriculture, a bronze figure of a dancer wearing bracelets from a New Delhi museum. In the background, from the same source, colored green, six varieties of pulses (or legumes). To the right, a museum depiction of Peking Man about half a million years ago, discovering fire and fashioning pebble tools. White matrix behind the dancer is a chart of the different styles of rock painting from early times to the present; the text says that the Paleololithic and Mesolithic rock paintings show "a vigour and verve which is not matched by the present-day tribal painting." All are from the Randhawa book. Finally, at bottom in blue, from a 1915 issue of Art and Archaeology magazine, a section of a sculptured frieze depicting Mayan life by American artist Jean Beaman Smith shown at the 1915 San Diego World's Fair. It depicts a sacrificial procession of young girls during a time of drought, based on a Spanish account. All images were originally black and white. Border is marbleized paper from an unknown source.
Another Portrait of Suffering
From Byrom Bramwell, Atlas of Clinical Medicine, 1896
(Click on image to enlarge) Link to original
Another unhappy medical syndrome, this time Chronic Dementia, as depicted in Bromwell's 19th century "atlas" of color portraits of patients. Again, I'm still trying to capture the mood of my near-nightmare described two entries below. Note use of asymmetrical border as part of the image. Also, I feel more comfortable with these faces instead of the pretty 20-somethings that typically appear in commercial and fine art. These suffering souls are real, the ones I pass in the hallway and on the bus.
Practical Workaday Graphic, A Public Notice
Application of my PD research and font work. No record of source of original graphic. Font is Tiki Tooka. We'll see if the co-op uses it. It's a simple announcement of deadlines for an upcoming co-op election. Got people speculating about whether it's suitable for this staid 60-year-old residential corporation. Is that Daniel in the Lion's Den? Or is it what's-his-name removing a thorn from the lion's paw? Or simply a brave man looking the lion in the mouth. It may be too graphically strong for the laundry room focus group.
Scary Fractured Face
From Carl Heinrich Baumgartner, Illustrations de Kranken-Physionomik, 1842 and Michael Lee, Vorlon type font, Date unknown
(Click on image to enlarge) Link1 and Link2 to originals
Woke up in the middle of the night from a dream where a disembodied, fractured face was staring at me with expressionless eyes. Not quite a nightmare, but I couldn't go back to sleep. Anyway, I set out to duplicate the feeling and came up with a 19th century book of lithographs of mentally ill patients by a physician, Dr. Carl Baumgartner. It is hosted on the French PD site Gallica and it's worth a look (Link1 to originals) above. Here's the specific link to plate 48 shown above. I tried to create a fractured effect by selecting different sections of the face and moving them slightly. Not sure it worked. Overlaid all this with type in one of those science-fiction (Babylon 5) interstellar languages, Vorlon by Michael Lee.
Juana Romani and Pope Benedict
From Walter Sparrow, Women painters of the world: from the time of Caterina Vigri, 1413-1463, to Rosa Bonheur and the present day, 1905 and Publisher Unknown, Midweek Pictorial, Feb. 2, 1922
(Click on image to enlarge) Link1 and Link2 to originals
Still another painter from that 1905 women's art collection, Italian painter Juana Romani Giovanelli. I am still experimenting with the handling of high-contrast black & white degraded copies. At the bottom, on left, is the image of her self-portrait as it appears in the scan of the Sparrow book, color and detail removed by repeated scanning and copying. At the bottom on the right is a relatively clean version of the image. (Well, not exactly, the image went through my usual post-image processing. The untouched original is here.) Above those two pictures is the picture reworked using my new method of black removal. The blacks were replaced with a combination of (1) a trippy newspaper photograph of the Swiss Guards at a papal inauguration ceremony, in traditional metal armor and a costume designed by Michelangelo and (2) yet another marbleized endpaper. The newspaper photograph is rotated 90-degrees and is barely recognizable.
Actress portrays three stages in woman's life
From Publisher Unknown, Mid-Week Pictorial, Jan. 5, 1922; Clinton Wire Cloth Co. and Successful stucco houses, 1914
(Click on image to enlarge) Link1 and Link2 to originals
Roaring Twenties stage and silent film actress Elsie Ferguson is pictured in costume as the character Julie Venable in Zoe Akins' play "The Varying Shore." The play depicts Venable in 1847, left, at a coquettish age 16; in 1860, middle, at an all-business age 29; and finally in 1870, right, at age 39 "at the height of her power and charm." Ferguson was (according to Wikipedia) "one of the most beautiful women to ever set foot on the American stage"; check out her Google images page. She died in 1961, at age 78. Her three pictures are superimposed on a colored collage of six styles of stucco wall treatments from the trade catalog of a company that made the wire cloth used in applying stucco.
Nazi Imagery and Ideology Still Sting
From Erich Ludendorf & others, Der Kampf um Salzburg, c. 1937; Mathilde Ludendorf; Der ungesuehnte Frevel an Luther, Lessing, Mozart und Schiller, 1936; Bertold Nicolai Hoftatter, Wagen und Wirken, c. 1939; Dupuis Freres Limitee, Papiers-tentures: nouveautes, 1930; and William Pierce, Best of Attack and National Vangard, c. 1972
(Click on image to enlarge) Link1, Link2, Link3>, Link4, and Link5 to originals
My World War II hero father said "The United States signed a peace treaty with the Nazis. I never did." When you follow all the uploads to the public domain, as I try to do, there's a lot of Nazi stuff coming up lately, 65 years after Hitler killed himself. Here's a collage of some recent stuff I had to wade through. The top two images show a recurring Third Reich motif: a naked blond youth wrestling with a sinister figure all dressed in black. To the left, the motif appears in a study of some early political struggle in Salzburg by German general Erich Ludendorff. To the right, a naked blond youth is grabbed from behind by a skeleton -- again, dressed in black. I pass over in silence the homoerotic overtones of these depictions. At the bottom, from a children's book, is an idealized little German girl holding flowers while Death, marching past in a funeral procession, turns towards her. Those were all Nazi-era books. It's not a society I want to live in. Neonazis are still around, like the Nazis, victimizers with an irrational paranoia that says everybody is making them victims. A recent Neonazi anthology uses atrocity photographs instead of arguments to make points. After WWII, a grave was unearthed of a young German woman and her unborn baby killed by the Soviets. Someone took a photo and the Neonazis printed it -- as an argument against Communism. It's in the far upper right, largely obscured. The same Neonazis ran a photograph of the body of a Portuguese woman raped and murdered in Angola -- as an argument against Black self-governance. It's just below the murdered German, again, largely obscured. It's an ugly, ugly view of the world. The use of titillating atrocity porn is especially objectionable. I prefer not to touch this stuff, but it's there. Background is a wallpaper pattern recolored blood-red. Sorry, gentle reader. Won't touch this type of material again for a long time.
Angst in the Parlor on the Stage
From Etienne Weill (photographer), Theatre photographs from Ionesco's "How to get rid of it" and Chekhov's "Three sisters", 1957 and 1954; and Dupuis Freres Limitee, Papiers-tentures: nouveautes, 1930
(Click on image to enlarge) Link1, Link2, and Link3 to originals
Still fascinated by Weill's high-contrast stagey compositions. Here actors (again, not named) acting in Ionesco (top) and Chekhov (bottom). Again, I like the dramatic intensity. The suffering of the two women in Chekhov and the complete disconnect between the man and the woman in Ionesco. Placed on a frame/border composed of a wallpaper design from Dupuis. Distorted the image to make it television-screen shaped and added scan-lines to give it an old-timey look.
Rule of Thumb on Pleasing Borders
From Lydia Bolmar, Art in dress, with notes on home decoration, 1916; Conde Nast, Gazette du bon genre, 1912; and F. Vatelli (photographer), Portrait of Savorgnan de Brazza, c. 1890.
(Click on image to enlarge) Link1,
Link2, and Link3 to originals
From a century-old book on home decoration, a rule of thumb on the "Setting of Margins": 5 units on each side, 7 on top, 11 on bottom. The writer explains that the proportion "provide a good setting for the enclosed space." In my work on this website, I have often faced the framing question, and I will probably be experimenting some with the 5-5-7-11 proportion. The picture framed is a simple composition, done quickly. Background is another Dufy wallpaper (see previous two entries) called "Les Fruits." The seated figure is from the French government Public Domain website called Gallica. It is a studio portrait of French explorer Savorgnan de Brazza, for whom the Congolese capital Brazzaville is named. The simple black-and-white hand-drawn diagram that surrounds the wallpaper/explorer picture is from the Bolmar book.
The French have their own idiosyncratic idea of what Public Domain means. From a recent message circulating in PD circles:
"The French Ministry of Culture announced yesterday the signing of two
agreements between the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF) and private
firms for the scanning of documents belonging (either partially or as a
whole) to the public domain, including old books and over 200,000 sound
recordings. These partnerships include a 10-year exclusive agreement allowing for these
private firms to commercialize the digitized documents into their database
- before they will be made available online on the digital library of the
BnF (Gallica)."
National Healing, Prohibition, and Aurora Borealis
From Will Carleton, Poems for young Americans, 1906; and Fred Crewe, Poems of Klondyke's early days and Alaska's long white trail, 1921.
(Click on image to enlarge) Link1 and Link2 to originals
Two illustrations (by an artist not named) from Will Carleton's book of patriotic and sentimental poetry. Starting from bottom, illustration from poem "Mending the Old Flag" shows six women ("Three Northern maid and three from glades where dream the Southern weather") mending a battle-scarred American flag -- part of the post-Civil War healing that is still going on. Rising above that is a young woman struggling with a snake, from the poem "Serpent of the Still" which calls for women to unite against Demon Rum -- in other words, to support Prohibition. Above these two illustrations is a portrayal of Alaska's Northern Lights from Fred Crewes' book (which I have used before.)
Deteriorating Daguerreotype and Alchemical Font
From Matthew Brady, Portrait of Emma Bostwick, approx. 1855
(Click on image to enlarge) Link to original
Glass-plate daguerrotypes are very fragile. The excellent Public Domain Review recently published an article based on the Library of Congress' posting of some of its daguerrotypes. Here is civil war photographer Matthew Brady's portrait of Emma Gillingham Bostwick, scratched and peeling. Superimposed on it is an alchemical font discovered in my 30 Days of Fonts project. The font is called Agathodaimon, a free font designed by Andrew Taylor; the font refers to a fourth century Egyptian alchemist by that name whose work was consulted for many medieval poisons. I was able to enlarge this font as large as 500-points. Color scheme was aquamarine, maroon, and yellow, based on my memories of the color schemes of artifacts in the University of Pennsylvania Archaeology Museum's Lords of Time exhibit.
Paper Pyramid
From Fred Crewe, Poems of Klondyke's early days and Alaska's long white trail, 1921; and Alexander Karley Donald, ed., The Poems of Alexander Scott, 1902.
(Click on image to enlarge) Link1 and Link2 to originals
I have been experimenting with compositions of four equilateral triangles that can be folded into a pyramid. Here's my first, culled from a late Saturday night survey of Internet Archive website. Two images: (1) A photo of a young woman of indigenous Alaskan descent from a book of Alaskan memories; and (2) frontispiece to a book of 16th century Old Scottish poems. Directions to assemble pyramid: Tools: scissors, cellophane tape. Print image, then cut along edge of large triangle that contains four other triangles. Fold at points where small triangles meet, tape.
Later: On the right is a more typical rendering of this piece, displaying background by placing it on marbleized pattern copied from endpapers of unidentified book.
Links: Link1, Link2,
Link3, Link4
Links: Link1,
Link2,
Link3,
Link4
2/6/2013
