Philly-Bob’s Free-for-All 2016 One man's visual art, largely consisting of digital manipulations of images taken from my own photographs or downloaded from the Public Domain. Portrait by Remo Frangiosa

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Artist's Statement

Although I have been interested in art and graphic design all my life, I only began working seriously after I retired in 2010. The images in Philly-Bob's Free-for-All are digital manipulations of images. The images are either from the Public Domain or from my own archives of photos I have taken.

My images are strongly influenced by the optical textures I see when I close my eyes and by what I see when I dream. They are also influenced by the hallucinatory visions I saw under the influence of anaesthesia following open heart surgery.

I often use commercial art, illustration, and typography as a source of ideas.

For maximum effect with my images, click repeatedly on the image until it is full-size, which may be larger than your computer screen.

• 0. Title page of this series. Cartoon frame from Punk Planet is by John Crawford.
• 1. Semicolon/colon key
• 2. Shift Lock key
• 3. B, X keys
• 4. Z, N keys; note that designer broke a cardinal rule by running horizontal line all the way across the composition. That's what things were like in the Alternative Press, the freedom to break the rules.
• 5. B, @ keys
• 6. Upside down J; addition of clown face from Woodcutter's People Faces dingbat font. (The fonts, incidentally, of the series numerals and the "2017" are also from the Spanish bad-boy typographer Woodcutter. This will have to stand as my New Year's card. Fittingly, considering the incoming administration, the key that activates the dingbat "Clown" in the People Faces font is "$".
• 7. Q key
• 8. B key again, last in this series

"Of all the implications a Trump presidency has for global catastrophic risk —- and there are many —- the prospect of him ordering the launch of the massive US nuclear arsenal is by far the most worrisome. In the United States, the president has sole authority to launch atomic weapons. As Bruce Blair recently argued in Politico, Trump’s tendency toward erratic behavior, combined with a mix of difficult geopolitical challenges ahead, mean the probability of a nuclear launch order will be unusually high.
"If Trump orders an unwarranted launch, then the only thing that could stop it would be disobedience by launch personnel -- though even this might not suffice, since the president could simply replace them."

1. First,an image of Saint Joseph, the carpenter husband of Mary, mother of Jesus, done by Ade Bethune, said to be an advocate of traditional iconography.
2. Second, an image of an unidentified religious figure by Timothy Holloway.
3. Third, an image of a fish by Trappist monk Lavrans Nielson, with the caption "They Recognized Him" -- a reference I don't understand. Perhaps to Luke's "Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight."
4. Fourth, a fruit-filled tree with attendant birds by Rita Corbin, "Devoid of ego, Corbin generously provided her artwork free of charge to Catholic Worker communities."

RECOUNTS ARE ONLY AS GOOD AS THEY ARE ALLOWED TO BE

The existence of paper ballots is generally touted as the ultimate backstop guaranteeing the integrity of American elections, because “if there is a problem or any doubts, those ballots can always be recounted.”

They can be — but will they be?

Now we have seen three “recounts” up close and learned that, in practice, this amounts to a false and dangerous assurance. The effort to recount these ballots, where they do exist, has been blocked, subverted, and turned into a sham in each of the three states in which it has been attempted this month.

The sheer number (and variety) of obstacles that have been thrown in the path of the recount efforts in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania begs the question: What evidence are these blockades trying to hide?

In the same spirit that Rosemary Woods managed to erase just those 18 minutes of an hours-long Nixon tape that many believe to contain the “smoking gun” about the Watergate scandal, so we are led to suspect the Election 2016 smoking guns may be in places that refuse to recount by hand — counties that destroy or prevent the creation of ballot images by scanners; states that ruleagainst recounting in precincts where ballot bag seals are broken, or the number of voters does not match the number of ballots; and states whose courts, by partisan majority, simply rule that the recount cannot go forward at all.

A combination of administrative, financial, judicial, and operational tactics were used to hamper or stymie the recount effort in each state in which it was undertaken. A few examples of these tactics:

• Refusal to hand count in Wisconsin in the very counties with the brightest forensic red flags — Outagamie, Brown, Rock, e.g., where Trump vote shares dramatically exceeded expectations.
• Determination by a Republican Wisconsin judge that state law barred her from orderinga statewide hand count despite her own preference for one as the “gold standard.”
• Fees inflated in Wisconsin from an estimated $600,000 for statewide hand recount in 2011, to $3.9 million for a less laborious mixed machine/hand count in 2016. Racine County, e.g., charging more than 50 times to count by machine what it charged for its last county-wide recount, which was done by hand.
• Suits filed to block recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan by the Trump campaign or surrogates.
• Interpretation of Pennsylvania law to mean that more than 27,000 individual petitioners had to file in more than 9,000 precincts in order to proceed with a recount at all.
• Pennsylvania state court requiring the posting of a $1 million bond by Green Party candidate Jill Stein to even consider her petition for a statewide recount.
• Michigan lower court halting the recount on the dubious legal basis that Stein can’t win (there is no such requirement in applicable state law) and that no “credible” evidence of fraud (which of course was what the recount was looking for) had been presented.
• Michigan Supreme Court affirming a lower court ruling on straight 3-to-2 party-line vote, concluding that Jill Stein is not an “aggrieved candidate.”
• Bush-appointed federal judge stating in his ruling that it “borders on the irrational” to suspect hacking occurred in Pennsylvania, where the vast majority of ballots were electronic and non-recountable, while ignoring tens of thousands of provisional (paper)ballots, which could have been recounted.

This is not the behavior of campaigns confident of the validity of their victories. Nor of administrators confident of the security and accuracy of their electoral processes. The result was a partial recount in some places and none at all in others, leaving the whole enterprise riddled with gaping holes and dark, inaccessible crevices where evidence may lie concealed.

Media coverage has ignored or soft-pedaled most of these roadblocks, misreported the actions and motives of Jill Stein, and adhered tightly to the “nothing to look at here, folks” theme. Jeffrey Toobin, writing in The New Yorker, went so far as to attribute the entire motivation for the recount to Jill Stein’s “narcissism.”

While allegations swirl about possible Russian interference in our election, the very process by which light might have been shed on such, or any, interference has been stopped in its tracks with barely a raised brow or a whimper of protest from our supposedly free press.

The recount — a major and massive effort to protect democracy by shining light on an electoral process designed for concealment — has thus far been of dubious, if not negative, value.

But the lessons learned can be invaluable:

1. The American vote-counting process has been revealed as a process designed to conceal;
2. Recounts and, by extension, paper ballots, unless hand counted in public on election night, are in no way sufficient to ensure the honesty, accuracy, and fidelity of that process; and
3. American vote counting must, by public demand and public action, be brought into the light and made openly observable so that faith in the most fundamental of democratic processes can be restored.

Jonathan Simon is Executive Director of Election Defense Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring observable vote counting in electoral integrity. He’s also the author of Code Red: Computerized Election Theft in the New American Century.

Another account of recount shenanigans in Michigan and Wisconsin (Link2).
Sources:
Link whowhatwhy.org/2016/12/15/recounts-good-allowed/ Link2 www.truth-out.org/news/item/38767-the-republican-sabotage-of-the-vote-recounts-in-michigan-and-wisconsin
December 17, 2016

1. Photo by celebrity photographer James Abbe of Ziegfield dancer Martha Lorber (1900-1983), a frequent pin-up girl and nude model of the time.
2. Photo by Roman Freulich of silent film actress Eva Novak (1898-1988), retouched as cover art by artist Leo Sielke. To me, in this picture, Novak seems, well, vacuous -- pale, rosy cheeks, red red lips -- but if you check out her biography she seems rather interesting -- playing love interest to cowboy actor Tom Mix, she learned from Mix how to do stunts, excelled at it, married a stunt man, and moved to Australia. A bit of a tomgirl, a toughness not at all visible in this portrait.
3. Silent film star Norma Talmadge (1894-1957) in a promo shot for her movie Passion Flower; it is, says Wikipedia, "the story of the forbidden love of a man for his stepdaughter," Acacia (played by Talmadge), which leads to tragedy and murder. Talmadge is one of the few silent movie stars who has a following today; see her current fan website. Two technical points: (1) I toned down the color in this image because the colors interfered with the gorgeous parallels of the figure's hip and the large jar and (2) I am experimenting with flipping every image "over," i.e., horizontally; I find the effect vaguely disconcerting and threatening.
4. From the January, 1921 issue of Shadowland (Link3), dancers performing in the Bacchanale (an orgiastic musical composition) from a play called Mecca: A Mosaic in Music and Mime by the Australian Oscar Asche. You can read it here. By modern standards, it is a work of "Orientalism," a demeaning Western fantasy that locates the Middle East as a place of licentious abandon -- which hardly fits the modern reality. Technical note: again, I toned down the color.
5. A photo of three dancers on the stage of the traveling revue La Chauve-Souris (French: The Bat) by the Armenian impresario Nikita Balieff, known for the introducing The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers to the American musical repertoire. YouTube offers a mix of Harry Connick's performance combined with scenes from Disney's 1961 Babes in Toyland, suitable for kids.
6. Photo of Gilda Gray [or "Grey"] (1901–1959), an American actress and dancer who popularized the Shimmy (see the dance on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcemYjTdvZ8). The patterned background is from the 1931 catalog Rugs of fine quality (Link4). Technical note: my art teacher reviewed this series and told me to back off on my emphasis on frames and make the series numeral less prominent.
7. Subtitle of this studio photo is: "Betty Williams: One of the Piquant Personalities of 'The Midnight Frolic.'" Midnight Frolic was a production of Florenz Zi4eegfield.
8. Dancer and choreographer Martha Graham in a Javanese dance interlude. At teacher's suggestion, reducing frame from 1/4 maximum dimension to 1/5. Also experimenting with selections and shapes to vary from the traditional studio photographers' compositions.
9. A photo of Albertina Vitak, a Ziegfield show girl in a ballet pose. When she retired, she became a dance critic.
10. Photo of Helen Grenelle.a member of the Pavley-Oukrainsky Ballet, associated with the Chicago Opera Company.
11. Photo of dancer Dorothi Bok, appearing in the spectacle Aphrodite. See description here. This image is intended as the last of this series. Also intended as first of this series, in the sense that it becomes the "title page" or "cover" in any demonstration of the series -- hence, the numeral "0" in the series number on my emblem. There has been definite stylistic development here.

1. Mozart/Salieri: The Top 10% Problem: Consider a body of people ranked in order numerically by some skill, say, for example ballet, guitar, art, furniture-making. I find it next to impossible to distinguish among the top 10%. For instance, between the performer ranked at the top of the 10% and the performer ranked at the bottom of the 10%. Not sure where to go with this.
2. Have been feeling restless lately. Also, nervous about the possibility of a con man like Trump being elected as president. Motivated by my enjoyment of the magazine Social and the Cuban Art Deco design therein, I've been thinking creating a separate web page on the subjct: such a project could include a trip to Miami Beach to take photographs of the Art Deco-inspired buildings and to look at collections of other Cuban magazines (such Carteles, Bohemia and Vanidades). And then (especially if Trump wins) a trip to recently unblockaded Cuba to research that neglected period of artistic activity in Cuba.

Russian Symbolist's Obsession with Demon Poem
 
Four images from the 1911 art book Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubelʹ; zhiznʹ i tvorchestvo (Link1). Mikhail Vrubel is a painter difficult to classify. Some consider him a symbolist, some consider him a throwback to earlier times. I can't read the book text because of the Cyrillic alphabet. At left is some sort of vegetative "Green Man". The two horizontal images are from his "Demon Prostrate" series -- recurring images of a demon buried in the ground, based on a poem by Mikhail Lermontov. (English translation here.) These demon images were done at the end of his career before he was put in a mental hospital. See critical analysis here.) The story of the Fallen Angel/Demon's tainted love for the human Tamara has inspired many European artists. Far right is an earlier, more traditional image of a gypsy woman with fortune-telling cards.
Art can be a quiet, harmless accomodation to mental obsession and upset. It plays that role in my life.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/mikhailaleksandr00iare_0
July 20, 2016

Tragic Actresses, Zoo Cat, Farm Kitchen
 
More from old issues of Harper's Weekly (Links). Left, actress Eileen Hyman huddles against a wall in William Butler Yeats' tragic play On Bailie's Strand, and, right, actress Margaret Anglin appearing as Antigone, the tragic, heroic Greek king's daughter who defied her father to honor her brother's funeral. Also in the picture, a wild cat from an article on how wild animals are captured for zoos and, as a background frame, a photo of a farm woman in her kitchen (her butter churner is visible in bottom center).
I am rethinking my style. My aim here is to set up a surrealistic tableau. It doesn't make real-life sense, but it makes "dream" sense -- I'm here, I don't know what the hell's happening, but I'm thoroughly engaged and curious to see what happens next.
8/4/16: Entered this image in the Plastic Club's Member's Choice show.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_oYU-AQAAMAAJ
Link2 archive.org/details/bub_gb_-WktAQAAMAAJ
July 19, 2016

Lost Painting that Inspired a Kipling Poem
  From a 1903 Harper's Weekly (Link1), a copy of a painting by 19th century Pre-Raphaelite Philip Burne-Jones, entitled The Vampire. The painting is now "lost," i.e., disappeared into a private collection. Burne-Jones was said to use stage actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell as a model for the femme fatale draining the life from the victim. Another admirer of Campbell was George Bernard Show, who wrote in a letter to her: "I want my dark lady. I want my angel. I want my tempter, I want my Freia with her apples. I want the lighter of my seven lamps of beauty, honour, laughter, music, love, life and immortality. I want my inspiration, my folly, my happiness, my divinity, my madness, my selfishness, my final sanity and sanctification, my transfiguration, my purification, my light across the sea, my palm across the desert, my garden of lovely flowers, my million nameless joys, my day's wage, my night's dream, my darling and my star." Burne-Jones' popular, widely-displayed painting inspired Rudyard Kipling's poem The Vampire, as described in this discussion of the impact of the painting on the vampire tradition. The painting is placed upon a framing collection of items from the 1954 catalog Merchandise presentation : specialists in merchandise presentation, demonstrations, displays, exhibits (Link2), showing various store display banners.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_ELJCAQAAIAAJ
Link2 archive.org/details/W.L.StensgaardAndAssociatesInc.
July 17, 2016

Lady in Mirror, Mirrored
 
Illustration from a 1944 glass catalog How glass can make your new home lighter (Link1). The advertising copy says "No home is complete without at least full-length door mirror. A favorite with the entire family. Shows you how you look from head to toe..."
I am generally interested in images of women reflected in mirrors, especially young women from the era when my mother was young and I was an infant.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/HowGlassCanMakeYourNewHomeLighter
July 16, 2016

Victim of Volcano, Dancers, Baseball Fans
 
From a 1902 issue of Harper's Weekly (Link1), the center image shows a news photo of the damage from a 1902 volcanic eruption that destroyed the village of St. Pierre, pop. 30,000. The caption reads:
"A Mute Witness of the St. Pierre Horror: Among the debris [in the hospital]...was found the body shown in the photograph here. The upraised hand seems to indicate some last attempt to avert danger. Although the clothing was completely burned away, the body itself was lit tle charred... [T]he resemblance to the bodies found in the ruins of Pompeii was most striking."
At the bottom, from a 1913 issue of Harper's Weekly (Link2), a group of Massachusetts women recreate a Greek freize. The whole image is placed on a frame/background from the same issue, showing fans at an amateur baseball game.
Note: Today marks my first visit to the gym since 6/21, when I stubbed my right little toe. That's the day I did Courchesne Abstractions on Stencil Patterns. A productive period since then, perhaps, but I think I came a bit untethered and obsessive without exercise.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_PYU-AQAAMAAJ
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_oYU-AQAAMAAJ
July 16, 2016

Lady Knitting
  From a 1991 issue of the Rhode Island Medical Journal (Link1), an advertisement for an insulin drug portrays a woman sitting in a chair.
One criticism of my work is that I tend to focus on attractive women of childbearing age -- the "Male Gaze," as the feminists call it. Thinking about it, I don't feel guilty. Look at all the images of women -- in fashion, in porn, in religious iconography -- and they tend to draw from the same demographic. Is that a justification? Anyway, this nice lady knitting is intended to counteract that tendency in my selection of subjects.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/rhodeislandmedic7412rhod
July 15, 2016

Six Corrugation Patterns on Hexagonal Honeycomb
 
Base is the hexacomb pattern of a beehive, from the 1905 Praktischer wegweiser für rationelle bienenzucht (Link1: Google Translate: "Practical signpost for rational apiculture"). The six circular patterns are from the 1899 Allgemeine Tierzucht; ein Lehr- und Handbuch für Studierende und Praktiker (Link2: Google Translate: "General Livestock ; a teaching and Manual for Students and Practitioners"). The six circles represent different patterns in a "corrugation" process.
It was relaxing to float into the world of pure geometric composition. No bloody ghosts.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_nNtCAAAAYAAJ_2
Link2 archive.org/details/bub_gb_S_dUAAAAYAAJ
July 14, 2016

Consquences of Allenby's Stroll into Jerusalem, 1917
   
From the English government via Wikimedia (Link1), a 1917 photograph of British General Edmund Allenby entering on foot into Jerusalem's Old City after the Battle of Jerusalem, when his army took the city from the Ottoman Empire. Allenby's triumphant entry on foot was considered a sensitive gesture, meant to spare the feelings of the city's inhabitants. But the unfortunate alliance of the Turks with the losing side in World War I and the subsequent loss of influence and territory was deeply felt in the Middle East. Next, a New York Evening Post editorial cartoon from a 1918 Cartoons magazine (Link2) shows how the event was seen around the world, as a continuation of the Crusades. This cartoon was captioned: "AT JERUSALEM: Richard Coeur de Lion: 'My dream come true!'". It shows the ghost of King Richard looking down proudly from a distance of five centuries at Allenby's victorious desert soldiers.
As a boy, I had a sentimental, romantic, pious view of the Crusades. In my current view, the Crusades were similar to the violent religious fanaticism of today's ISIS.
Odd how this period of my life contains so many detailed, thoughtful excursions into the past.
Sources:
Link1 www.flickr.com/photos/government_press_office/7169338186/
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_9HRIAAAAYAAJ
July 12, 2016

Contorted Elephant
 
From an 1892 Nast's Weekly (Link1), a political cartoon by Thomas Nast, showing the Republican elephant (which Nast introuced). It is superimposed on a magazine advertisement from the 1933 Film-Lovers Annual.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_BHFHAAAAYAAJ
Link1 archive.org/details/filmloversannual00dean_0
July 11, 2016

Armenian Patterns
 
Two superimposed images from books of Armenian culture. Underlying is what seems to be a drawing of a geometric rug containing pictures of animals, from the 1984 Hay mshakuyt'e [Armenian Culture], Book 2 (Link1). On top is what seems to be a cave drawing of a hunting scene from from the 1971 Hay mshakuyt'e [Armenian Culture], Book 1 (Link2). The book are in Armenian, so everything here is mainly guesswork.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/Hzhp02HayMshakuyte
Link1 archive.org/details/Hzhp01HayMshakuyte
July 11, 2016

The King and the Beggar Maid
       
To the right, a portion of Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones' depiction of a Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, showing (in right center) a simple beggar girl "more beautiful than the day" and, in the lower left, King Clophetua, who fell in love with her. See the story here. The image appeared in the 1908 Art Journal (Link1). Also, at upper left, a piece of jewelry from the 1909 Art Journal (Link2), displayed on a page ornament from the 1911 Alraune, die Geschichte eines lebenden Wesens (Link3; Google Translate: "Mandrake , the story of a living being"). Although I cannot read German, here is a synopsis of the book: "A scientist, Professor Jakob ten Brinken, interested in the laws of heredity, impregnates a prostitute in a laboratory with the semen of a hanged murderer. The prostitute conceives a female child who has no concept of love, whom the professor adopts. The girl, Alraune, suffers from obsessive sexuality and perverse relationships throughout her life. She learns of her unnatural origins and she avenges herself against the professor." There is also a film version of the Alraune story, starring Brigitte Helm.
Next: Cover picture from an old Kelsey printing equipment catalog (Link4). The Kelsey was a small printing press used for small runs of wedding invitations, business cards, etc. As a hobbyist, I used to own one in the late 1960's.
Next: A performance picture of a 1960's punk band from the magazine ReSearch (Link5), inside a frame from Social, a 1916 Cuban magazine. The image is ruined by a stray brush stroke of powder blue that I am too lazy to remove.
Next: In the same frame, an advertising photograph for men's grooming products, in a 1968 edition if The Australian Women's Weekly, showing a stylish woman stepping into a pool of water. (Link5)
Not pleased with this series. I may leave them in this short form. Not sure what's going on in my shaggy aged head.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/gri_33125006187856
Link2 archive.org/details/gri_33125006187864
Link3 archive.org/details/alraunediegeschi00eweruoft
Link4 archive.org/details/SocialVolINo12Diciembre1916
Link3 archive.org/details/The_Australian_Womens_Weekly_25_12_1968
Link5 archive.org/details/ReSearchIndustrialCultureHandbook
Link6 archive.org/details/The_Australian_Womens_Weekly_25_12_1968
Link7 archive.org/details/NeonTypeDivisionTypefoundersChicago1962pt2
July 9, 2016

Goodbye Soldier, 1915
  A photograph from a 1915 Kriegs-album ("War Album") issue of the German-American magazine New Yorker Staats Zeitung (Link1: Google Translate "State Newspaper"). The English caption reads "The Volunteer's Farewell", a sentimental scene as the young volunteer heads off to the horrors of World War I, while his mother (or girlfriend) carries his rifle. War is on my mind on this centennial of that awful war; also a touch of Survivor's Guilt because I missed Vietnam, the war of my generation; and despair at the current consequences of my country's proxy-war foreign policy in the Middle East.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/gri_33125006187864
July 5, 2016

Patience on a Monument of Grief
 
Old painting on stone background, Patience On A Monument Smiling At Grief by "second-wave" Pre-Raphaelite artist, the aristocratic J.R. Spencer-Stanhope. The image appears in the 1909 Art Journal (Link1). The image refers to a line in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, when one female character, Viola, concealing herself as a man, says to her secret love, the Duke:
"She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i’th’ bud
Feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?"
I do not understand this speech.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/gri_33125006187864
July 5, 2016

Fourth of July
 
Cover of sheet music to the 1942 wartime song Let's go!! : let's get started today!! (Link1), showing an extemely fit Uncle Sam getting ready for a fight. Sample lyric: "My country! 'Tis of thee,/is our song of liberty/To neglect, Not protect/Would mean catastrophe."
That's how I feel with an election coming up with NeoCon Warmonger Clinton and Unstable Narcissist Bully Trump.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/b10009462
July 4, 2016

Wartime Illuminated Letters
       
An illuminated initial letter "D" from an illustrated book of World War I memories, Ostpreussen-Chronik : Kriegsbilder aus den beiden Russen-Einfällen 1914/15 (Link1; Google Translate: "Ostpreussen Chronicle : War pictures from the two Russian invasions 1914/15"). It shows soldiers drinking while an old man sprawled on the ground.
Next, another image from the same book, an illuminated letter "J". It shows charging death's head mounted cavalry, presumably Cossacks. The scene and letter are superimposed on a photo of a model from the cover of a 1941 sewing crafts magazine, New Things Happen to Tatting, No. 159 (Link2). (Tatting is the handcraft lace seen on the model's wrist and breast pocket.) Another illuminated letter "W", showing refugees crowding to board a train, set on top of a picture of the Victoria Hall, in Leeds, from the 1906 Art Journal (Link3).
Next, again from the WWI picture book, a skeleton sits in the woods holding the sandglass of time and death. This time I removed the lettering becausse the illustration was so much larger than the lettering.
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_OHvzAAAAMAAJ
Link2 archive.org/details/NewTatting159Coats
Link3 archive.org/details/gri_33125006187831
July 2, 2016

Clipper Ship Rigging and Protective Mother
 
Pictues of old square-rigged clipper ship rigging from a German officers navy memoirs, Seeteufel : Abenteuer aus meinem Leben (Item1) . It is set against a picture of a mother protecting two children from the 1903 Die moderne Plastik in Deutschland (Item2).
Sources:
NA
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_VFfNAAAAMAAJ
Link2 archive.org/details/bub_gb_-ZdZAAAAYAAJ
June 30, 2016

New Friend in Fossil Land?
 
Car trip today to Cherry Hill, New Jersey, to visit jewelry and rock shop, Gary's Gem Garden looking for Trilobite fossils, but they were pricey -- cheapest one was $200. But as wife Janice and friend Ted looked over the fossils, they both suggested I look at the stately ammonite, much more affordable at $20. Ended up buying a pair and paid $15 apeice to have them mounted as pins. Will consider adopting the ammonite as my artistic signature instead of the trilobite, as on this one.
Sources:
NA
June 29, 2016

Sheet Music, Delilah, Rug and NASA Photograph
 
From the cover of sheet music for a 1919 piano song I've got a grand baby with a baby grand down in Dixieland (Link1), a woman perches on an open piano. Above her, a heart-shaped section of rug from the 1933 Congoleum Patterns (Link2). Below the piano, an Elihu Vedder painting of Delilah from the 1903 Arts Journal (Link3) Finally, the background behind the heart and piano is a slide from a 1957 NASA report Influence of Hot-Working Conditions on High-Temperature Properties of a Heat-Resistant Alloy (Link4).
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/b10244578
Link2 archive.org/details/CongoleumCanada
Link3 archive.org/details/gri_33125006187807
Link4 archive.org/details/NASA_NTRS_Archive_19930092329
June 28, 2016

Mother & Kids at Bath Time, Jewels and Lace
 
In the center strip, a combination of the charcoal sketch for a painting "Twilight" by F. Cayley Robinson showing a mother at bath-time drying off her two children, centered in a fancy necklace designed by Alfred Gilbert. Both images are from the 1903 Arts Journal (Link1). The composition is set upon an image of lace from the 1800 Madame Goubaud's pillow lace patterns, and instructions in Honiton lace making (Link2).
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/gri_33125006187807
Link2 archive.org/details/PillowLace
June 28, 2016

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
 
Or, in other words, from Dante, "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter". That is the caption on the bottom picture, an illustration of five women from The Divine Inferno titled "A Glimpse Into Hell" by American Symbolist painter Elihu Vedder. The image is taken from a 1903 edition of The Art Journal (Link1). Above and to the left is the head of a woman from the cover of a 1901 piano sheet music called Hiawatha: A Summer Idyll (Link2). The two are connected by a wreath from the 1870 Rustic adornments for homes of taste (Link3). (Note to Self: the wreath is too dark, I should have put a 10% layer of white over it.)
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/gri_33125006187807
Link2 archive.org/details/b10019698
Link3 archive.org/details/rusticadornments00hibb
June 27, 2016

Three Dreamy Victorian Ladies
 
My treatment of an iconic romantic painting -- Albert Moore's canvas, showing three classical Greek ladies napping on a sofa. It's called The Dreamers. Here, my work runs perilously close to simply appropriating old work with fancy new filters. But I made one structural change, cropping a bit on the right for balance. The image is from an edition of the 1844 Art Journal (Link1).
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/gri_33125006187682
June 25, 2016

Antique Coins on Linoleum
 
Two sides of a Greek coin (a hekta) said to date from 400 B.C., from the Greek island of Lesbos. The left face depicts the head of the Minoan king's daughter Ariadne, the right face shows a lion gnawing on an animal bone. The images are from a 2014 Harlan J. Berk, Ltd., 190th Buy or Bid Sale catalog. (Link1). (Only 15 of these coins are known. This mint condition coin -- the best of them -- had a catalog price of $6,000. I consider that a bargain.) The coins are placed upon an assortment of samples from the 1933 Congoleum patterns (Link2).
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/HJB190BBS
Link2 archive.org/details/CongoleumCanada
June 25, 2016

Old Men in Conversation
 
An image of two German men relaxing at an inn, from the 1906 Deutscher Humor im Bilde (Link1; Translation "German Humor in Pictures"). Above them, like a cartoon talk bubble, some pictures of jewelry from an 1844 Art Journal (Link2). The picture expresses my pleasure at getting together with old friends and shooting the breeze.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/deutscherhumorim00dobs
Link2 archive.org/details/gri_33125006187682
June 24, 2016

Angry Woman, Magic, Antique Tools
 
In the foreground, an engraving of a sculpture called Vengeance from an 1844 Art Journal (Link1). It shows a woman rising up from her knees, with a determined look on her face and a sword's hilt clasped in her hand. The statue was attributed to Samuel Fry. In the backgroun, a set of photos showing how to perform a card trick in a 1914 book by Burling Hull on Bulletin Of Latest Sleights And Tricks (Link2). Also in the background is a drawing of antique Roman rigging tools (I think) in the 1784 Le antichità romane (Link3).
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/gri_33125006187682
Link2 archive.org/details/BulletinOfLatestSleightsAndTricks
Link2 archive.org/details/gri_33125010859839
June 23, 2016

Woman Thinking Wistful Thoughts
   
Center is an engraving by Pre-Raphaelite painter Frederick Sandys, entitled If. It shows a young woman seated on a beach, moodily staring out to sea and absently chewing on a strand of her curly hair. It is from an 1849 edition of Art Journal (Link1). It is framed within a cover page from a 1963 Progress lighting fixture catalog (Link2) overlaid with a larger version of the engraving. For somparison, the second image shows the original engraving, showing how much my treatment adds color and shape.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/gri_33125006187682
Link2 archive.org/details/ProgressLightingFixtures
June 23, 2016

Greek Girl Playing Jacks against Sleight of Hand Photos
   
From an 1862 Art Journal, an engraving of the famous painting by Frederic Leighton of a Greek Girl playing Knucklebones, an early version of today's game of Jacks (Item1). The Art Journal explained the girl has "a mood of gentle distraction... that is suited to the game of idle skill which occupies but does not engross her... Her thoughts may stray as they may toward some half-awakened love, or some dreamy pleasure in festival or dance." The four knucklebones appear in mid-air in the lower right of the painting. The painting is then placed upon a background of photographs from magician Burling Hull's 1914 book of magic tricks Master Sleights With Billiard Balls (Item2), which explains the "Lightning Ball Vanish," in which a magician makes a billard ball vanish by concealing it on the back of his hand, as seen in the picture on the lower right. Another element in the background is a stencil from the 1925 Decorators' guide and stencil catalogue (Link3). For somparison, the second image shows the original colors of the Leighton painting.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/gri_33125006187682
Link2 archive.org/details/MasterSleightsWithBilliardBalls
Link3 archive.org/details/CanadianGypsumAndAlbastineLimited
June 22, 2016

Courchesne Abstractions on Stencil Patterns
 
There was an influential magazine published in Quebec during the 50's and 60's called Cahiers de Cite Libre (Link1). It was founded by future Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and opposed Francophone separatism. One of the artists who illustrated its articles in the late 60's was named Courchesne (sp?) and provided starkly simple black ink abstractions. Three of those appear in this image. Those three images are placed upon an illustration from the 1925 Decorators' guide and stencil catalogue (Link2). In the originals, those weird Couchese shapes were pure black on white; in my variation, the stencil colors of the background bleed through the pure black.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/2CAHIERSCITELIBRE1966
Link2 archive.org/details/CanadianGypsumAndAlbastineLimited
June 21, 2016

The Relationship Between Europe and England
 
The gruesome cover of a 1916 pro-German polemic Vampire Of The Continent written by German aristocrat Ernst zu Reventlow. The book blames all of Europe's problems from the 16th century to the time of writing upon an England consumed by greed, intent on "organized piracy and highway robbery". The Reventlow family also produced a famous race car driver and a feminist writer known as the "Bohemian Countess."
I offer it as a reference to the long and sometimes bloody relationship between England and Europe, and as an excuse to state my position on the upcoming Brexit vote allowing the British to leave the European Union. My position is that the English should vote to stay in for economic reasons and to minimize the chance of another war.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/EnglandVampireOfTheContinentReventlow1916_201606
June 21, 2016

Building a Tunnel in the City
 
From the 1876 Bibliothek der Unterhaltung und des Wissens (Link1; Google Translate: "Library of entertainment and knowledge"),a construction photo of the central electric railway in London, showing a work break during digging of the Bond Street Station.
In his youth, my maternal grandfather, Bob Guston, freshly arrived from Sweden, worked as a sandhog on tunnels under the river in Chicago. That's when he met the pretty Irish housemaid who became my grandmother.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_oOdT7TffRfkC_2
June 20, 2016

Composition in Time and Art
 
Four elements in one picture. The background is an Arabic fresco from an undated HISTOIRE DE FRESQUE (Link1). The circular element placed upon the fresco is an astrological timepiece from Old clocks and watches & their makers; being an historical and descriptive account of the different styles of clocks and watches of the past, in England and abroad, to which is added a list of eleven thousand makers (Link2). Next to that is a drawing of a naked woman from the 2002 Art Of Drawing: The Complete Course (Link3) and, below that, the six steps involved in drawing an owl from the 1913 What to draw and how to draw it (Link4).
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/HistoireDeFresque2HistoryOfFresco
Link2 archive.org/details/oldclockswatches00brit_0
Link3 archive.org/details/ArtOfDrawing-TheCompleteCourse
Link4 archive.org/details/whattodrawhowtod00lutz
June 19, 2016

Treatments from Old Catalog
   
First image is from Eaton's Fall and Winter Catalogue 1899-1900 (Link1), a selection of Glassware. Eaton's ("Canada's Greatest Store") was a historic Toronto department store, which was sold to Sears in 1999 and shut down in 2002.
Second picture is a treatment of rings from the same catalog. The ring in the center is a MIZPAH ring which memorializes a bond or agreement or trust between two people.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/eatons1899190000eatouoft
June 18, 2016

Six Tableaux for Magic Lanterns
 
From a 1900 catalog of G. Gilmer, Catalogue No. 26. Appareils à Projections Lumineuses fixes et animées, accessoires: Appareils d'Agrandissements, Décors et Attractions Lumineux pour Théatres (Link1). Gilmer and his brother were suppliers of equipment for early Magic Lantern shows. These six slides are for Tableux Vivants, in which a female figure in tights is "dressed" by the projected image. A kind of precursor to today's movie computer-generated effects and tomorrow's Virtual Reality.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/GilmerLanternCatalog1900
June 18, 2016

The Abiding Pleasure of a Drink and Smoke
 
A cleric sits comfortably in a window seat, enjoying a cigar, a drink, and the afternoon light. An image from the 1906 Deutscher Humor im Bilde (Link1, Google Translate: "German Humor in Picture").
I miss smoking. I'd almost certainly be dead if I hadn't quit 30 years ago. But I still miss it....
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/deutscherhumorim00dobs
June 17, 2016

1940's Pinup
 
A modest pinup from a 1940's men's magazine, Night Life Tales (Link1), placed on a background of archaelogical patterns.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/Night_Life_Tales_v01n19_1940_Darwination-DPP
June 16, 2016

Children Examine Disinfected Water
 
Two little Indonesian girls examine two plastic bottles of drinkable water -- from a brochure SOLAR WATER DISINFECTION, by a Swiss group that promotes the use of exposure to sunlight in plastic bottles to create clean drinking water. (Link1).
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/SolarWaterDisinfection-English-Sodis
June 15, 2016

Watch Springs and Pocket Watch
 
In the foreground, a design from a 1905 catalog Watchsprings (Link1) from the Waltham Watch Company; the image is captioned "a dozen resilient springs". On top of that is a drawing of a pocket watch that appears in a 1911 catalog from the same company Waltham watches : some of their qualities, styles, trade-marks and prices for careful buyers to consider (Link2).
Note that the trademark Trilobite has been rendered as a pattern in the background frame.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/mainsprings00walt
Link2 archive.org/details/walthamwatchesso00walt
June 15, 2016

Knife Set Against Figure and Tea Kettle
 
From the 1897 Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (Item1), in the foreground a collection of knives leaning against a wall. In the right background, a tea kettle set, and on the right a reclining figure.
Sources:
. Link1 archive.org/details/gri_33125009691763
June 14, 2016

Janice's Dying Rose Picture and My Interpretation of It
   
On the left, one of wife Janice's photographs from her Past Their Prime series, a poignant collection of pictures of flowers in the late stages of decay. On the right, my treatment of the same image.
Sources:
. NA
June 13, 2016

Crustacean Eggs
   
From chartx showing enlarged photographs of the eggs of the fairy shrimp, from a 2011 issue of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales (Link1).
These last images are strongly influenced by two brand new filters offered on Dreamscope, Petals and Jewels. Also, experimenting with placement and prominence of my Trilobite signature emblem.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/ProceedingsLinn133Linn
June 12, 2016

Street Crowd and Woman Eating Cracker
 
A composition of two works by Friedrich Karl Gotsch, one a large painting of an urban scene of the time and the other a pen sketch of a woman eating a cracker or candy bar, eyes boring into the artist. The images are from a large collection of various artists published in 1921 collection of Junge Kunst (Link1: "Young Art") by publisher bL, An illustration of spike-helmeted soldiers going off to the World War I front, provided with beverages by patriotic village women as the troop train slows at a local station. Image is from a 1921 collection of Junge Kunst (Link1: "Young Art") by a Liepzig publisher.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_sv4_AAAAIAAJ
June 12, 2016

Cheerful Send-off to the Trenches
 
An illustration of spike-helmeted soldiers going off to the World War I front, provided with beverages by patriotic village women as the troop train slows at a local station. Image is from the 1915 Unsere Bayern im felde ; erzählungen aus dem weltkriege, 1914/15, berichte von bayerischen feldzugsteilnehmern (Link1: Google translate: "Our Bayern in felde ; narratives from the world wars , 1914-15 , reports of Bavarian campaign of participants"). Note the excited Dachsund in the lower left. Nobody then knew the horrors awaiting the soldiers -- from both sides -- in the trenches of that war.
God, I hate war. And America faces an awful electoral choice, with Clinton who is a Neocon who believes in violence as an acceptable instrument of global political maneuvering and Trump who is a thin-skinned, ignorant and unpredictable bully!
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_2zFNAAAAMAAJ
June 11, 2016

Kinky German Orientalism
 
From the 1907 Blühende Gärten des Ostens : 78 Erzählungen, Gedichte und Schwaenke aus den Litteraturen des Orients (Link1; Google Translate, "Flower gardens of the East : 78 stories, poems and anecdotes from the literatures of the Orient"). The illustration is by artist and engraver Franz Christophe.
I am interested in this because of the artist's use of a symbol (an owl) in the upper right corner, which is similar to my experimentation with a trilobite as a personal signature symbol.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_JC7gAAAAMAAJ
June 11, 2016

Moralistic Tale for Young Girls
 
From the 1865 book of virtuous instruction called Moral emblems (Link1), an illustration to demonstrate the precept: "The Pot Goeth So Long to the Water Til At Last It Comes Broken Home." The accompanying poem tells the story of a girl who went to town with her clay pot to fetch water, but she got carried away playing games with the boys and broke it. Now she's heading home, facing shame with a broken pot. Feminist scholars can go into more detail on this as a warning against sexual activity.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_4hJEAQAAMAAJ
June 9, 2016

Catalog Cover Bouquet with Medallion
 
Central image is the cover image from the 1891 catalog of gardening seeds and supplies from A.B. Davis & Son (Link1). Inset in the circular center (instead of a simpering child) is a medallion from the L'art de terre chez les Poitevins : Suivi d'une étude sur l'ancienneté de la fabrication du verre en Poitou (Link2; Google Translate: The land art in Poitou : "Monitoring of a study on the age of the glass manufacturing in Poitou"). Poitou is the French province whose capital is Poitiers.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/BDavisSonmateri00ABDaD
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_7wU2AQAAMAAJ
June 9, 2016

Doomed Romanov Royals on Roof
 
From the 1922 account by Alexandra, consort of Czar Nicholas I, about the last days of the Czar's family, Die letzte Zarin : ihre Briefe and Nikolaus II. und ihre Tagebuchblätter von 1914 bis zur Ermordung (Link1: Google Translate: The last empress : her letters and Nicholas II and their diaries from 1914 to the murder), a photo of the Czar and his children on the roof of the house in Yakaterinburg where they were exiled after the October revolution. This was the city where the Czar and his family were murdered.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_wFCNlxSBEiIC
June 8, 2016

Jungle Warrior
 
From an 1896 Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (Link1: Google Translate: Magazine for Ethnology) article on indigienous tribal people living in the interior of the Philippine island of Luzon, a photograph by early explorer and businessman Alexander Schadenberg. The young warrior seems to hold a spear and shield.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_wFCNlxSBEiIC
June 8, 2016

Objects in Bird Stomachs, Linoleum, and Daisy Picker
 
Foreground, another sentimental portrait of a young girl, detaching daisy petals as she murmurs "He loves me, he loves me not", from Cassell's Family Magazine (Link1). Deep background is a layout of linoleum patterns from a 1960 catalog (Link2)
And the objects in the background circle are indigestible items removed from bird stomachs, taken from a public service advertisement in a 2007 Women's Health (Link3). Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_vKHQAAAAMAAJ
Link2 archive.org/details/Congoleum-nairnInc.FineFloorsAndWalls1960
Link3 archive.org/details/bub_gb_wMUDAAAAMBAJ
June 7, 2016

Aristocrats and Birds, Linoleum, Swaddled Colonial
 
Two young women stroll, feeding the birds outside a mansion, in another sentimental picture from Cassell's Family Magazine (Link1). They are placed on a linoleum pattern from the 1960 linoleum catalog (Link2), an inset of a swaddled colonial-era child from the 1813 Portraits, memoirs, and characters of remarkable persons from the reign of Edward the Third to the Revolution (Link3), and an actor in costume from a 1972 issue of The Talking Machine Review (Link4).
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_vKHQAAAAMAAJ
Link2 archive.org/details/Congoleum-nairnInc.FineFloorsAndWalls1960
Link3 archive.org/details/bub_gb_vkUDAAAAYAAJ
Link1 archive.org/details/TMR18
June 6, 2016

Three 1870 Ladies
   
Three sentimental images of women, from the 1874 Cassell's Family Magazine (Item 1). They are clothed in the frilly dresses of the time and executed in an academic realistic style. They are captioned, from top left, "A Girl's Story"; top right, "A Maiden's Dream"; and the swooning woman at the bottom is captioned "Killed, with his Face to the Foe!"
Sources:
June 5, 2016

Sr. Theresa, Linoleum Pattern, Ruined Road
 
A portrait of St. Teresa of Avila from the cover of a recent religious book (Item1). The image is based on a painting by the 18th-century painter Francois Gerard. Her picture is displayed on a pattern composed of two images: (1) a linoleum pattern from a 1960 catalog by Congoleum (Item 2) and (2) and the scattered logs of an old Roman road through the wetlands from the 1898 Die römischen Moorbrücken in Deutschland (Item 3: Google Translate, "Roman Swamp Roads in Germany"). My new trilobite emblem/seal (like a Japanese chop)is also present.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/SaintTeresaOfAvila
Link1 archive.org/details/Congoleum-nairnInc.FineFloorsAndWalls1960
Link3 archive.org/details/bub_gb_w2UZAAAAYAAJ
June 4, 2016

Magic Trick Explained and Floor Stretch
     
In the background, a picture looking down at a woman doing a floor stretch from a 1989 Yoga Journal (Link1)), with her outreached arms at the top. In the foreground, at the bottom, a diagram from the 1908 Optical Illusions (Link2), showing the explanation of an illusion called "The Delphic Oracle" in which, the head of a woman appears against the background of a Greek temple; after a while, the exhibitor also appears in the temple by means of mirrors at a 45-degree angle.
In the second, expanded version I include (1) a trilobite signet from the 1891 Elemente der geologie (Link3) and (2) some eyes from the June 1920 issue of the movie magazine The Tatler (Link4).
I believe this is a transitional period. The third image uses the Trilobite motif as a form of signature.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_vOsDAAAAMBAJ
Link1 archive.org/details/OpticalIllusions_201605
Link3 archive.org/details/bub_gb_vSoLAQAAIAAJ
Link4 archive.org/details/Tatler0620
June 3, 2016

Saucy and Haughty
   
Two women in one frame: left, a romantic 19th century painting of a Venetian flower seller, from a painting by the Austrian E. von Blaas, which appeared in an 1853 edition of the picture magazine Die Neue Gartenlaube (Link1); next society photographer Cecil Beaton's portrait, dated "around 1930," of Princess Natalie Paley, a descendant of the former Czar's Romanov dynasty, from the 1960 20th Century Photography By Museum Ludwig Cologne (Link2).
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_vT0gAQAAMAAJ
Link1 archive.org/details/20thCenturyPhotographyByMuseumLudwigCologne
June 1, 2016

Tableau Under Bridge
   
Combination of two pictures: one shows the underside of a railroad bridge over the river Speer in Berlin, from the 1896 Berlin und seine Bauten (Link1; Google translate: "Berlin and its buildings"). The second is a picture from the 1864 202 Holzschnitte nach Zeichnungen (Link2: Google translate: "202 Woodcuts to Drawings"). It is an illustration of the German legend of the Erlking, the evil Elf King that abducts children to satisfy his daughters. This is probably an illustration to the Goethe poem Der Erlkoenig, which tells the sad story of a man on horseback trying to save his child from the Elf King's lascivious daughters. He is chased by the bearded Elf King, while the daughters (on the right) await their prey. Here is one translation of the Goethe poem. Another translation (with the original German) is here. Both legend and poem are powerful and have been set to music several times.

Who rides, so late, through night and wind?
It is the father with his child.
He has the boy well in his arm
He holds him safely, he keeps him warm.

"My son, why do you hide your face in fear?"
"Father, do you not see the Elf-king?
The Elf-king with crown and cape?"
"My son, it's a streak of fog."

"You dear child, come, go with me!
(Very) beautiful games I play with you;
many a colorful flower is on the beach,
My mother has many a golden robe."

"My father, my father, and hearest you not,
What the Elf-king quietly promises me?"
"Be calm, stay calm, my child;
Through scrawny leaves the wind is sighing."

"Do you, fine boy, want to go with me?
My daughters shall wait on you finely;
My daughters lead the nightly dance,
And rock and dance and sing to bring you in."

"My father, my father, and don't you see there
The Elf-king's daughters in the gloomy place?"
"My son, my son, I see it clearly:
There shimmer the old willows so grey."

"I love you, your beautiful form entices me;
And if you're not willing, then I will use force."
"My father, my father, he's touching me now!
The Elf-king has done me harm!"

It horrifies the father; he swiftly rides on,
He holds the moaning child in his arms,
Reaches the farm with great difficulty;
In his arms, the child was dead.

Old School Computer Game Critters
   
In the left center, an illustration from the cover of the undated manual for the Apple II program called Creature Creator, popular in the 1980's, and in three corners, three creatures created by that program. Second image is a follow-up version that uses advanced distortion effects.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/A2_Creature_Creator_manual
May 30, 2016

Just a Reminder
 
I am getting annoyed by Clinton supporters' online demands that Bernie Sanders drop out of presidential race before July 25 beginning of convention. Before even California has voted! The Sanders movement represents an exciting new development in American political consciousness -- ohmigod, Democratic Socialism! -- and if the entrenched Democratic Party establishment shuts that movement out at the convention, it does so at its own risk. Especially since some polls show Sanders beating Trump while Clinton loses to Trump. I want Sanders to have influence over Democratic Platform and the future of the Democratic Party. I think he's earned it.

Dreamscape Tool Repaired
     
First image since Dreamscope started misfiring. I hope the final result is a little bit better than the last batch, which have disappointed me. Image of a woman from a chandelier is from the 1884 German magazine Kunstgewerbeblatt; Monatschrift (Item1; Google Translate: 'Monthly Crafts Sheet"), superimposed on a 14th century Arabian rug from the same magazine. One unusual thing is that I sent my original image through the Dreamscape app with that same image used to define the style, with the result being the second image.
The third image is the first result, sent through additional distortion/geometric filters.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_vT0EAAAAYAAJ
May 26, 2016

Treatments with and without Dreamscape
     
   
   
I have grown accustomed to using the filters available on the Dreamscope app for color and texture in my treatment of old black and white images. But tonight Dreamscope was down, so I had to rely on other methods, mainly on GIMP's Seamless Filter, Nova Liner, Fractalize. I like the result on left. Second image was created after Dreamscope utilities were partially restored. Third image is a quick re-do after Dreamscape was restored.
The image is a studio photograph of German film actress Maria Koppenhoffer from a 1943 issue of the slick German propaganda magzine Volk und Welt. Her image is placed over an abstract photograph from the same magazine, which appears to show insect eggs among twigs. (Link1)
Next row, fourth and fifth image is a combination of two images. Top, a child named Marjorie observes a nesting dove in a tree from a 1908 issue of The Queensland Naturalist (Link2). Bottom, two men in an astronomers' workshop grinding telescope lenses, from a 1905 issue of Velhagen & Klasings Monatshefte. (Link3) Sixth image is a collage of models exhibiting various poses in a LIFE magazine. (Link4)
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/VolkUndWelt1.Q1943
Link2 archive.org/details/QueenslandnaturIIQuee
Link3 archive.org/details/bub_gb_y1QiAQAAIAAJ
May 25, 2016

Paper Doll Dresses on Shell
 
A paper doll and a set of paper doll dresses from the 1911 Three hundred games and pastimes, or, What shall we do now? : a book of suggestions for children's games and employments (Link1) placed on a illustration of a sea shell from the 1808 Conchyliologie systâematique, et classification mâethodique des coquilles : offrant leurs figures, leur arrangement gâenâerique, leurs descriptions caractâeristiques, leurs noms, ainsi que leur synonymie en plusieurs langues : ouvrage destinâe áa faciliter l'âetude des coquilles, ainsi que leur disposition dans les cabinets d'histoire naturelle (Link2).
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/threehundredgame0000luca
Link2 archive.org/details/bub_gb_usoQAAAAIAAJ
May 24, 2016

God Abandons Disobedient Daughter
 
An illustration from the story of Richard Wagner's opera, the Ring Trilogy. Great God Wotan, displeased at his daughter Brunhilde's disobedience, disarms her and leaves her unconscious and helpless for the first man who comes along to take. But still, he loves her -- secretly Wotan is happy she stood up to him; he was just following the shrewish dictates of his nagging wife. So, here, he kisses the Valkyrie tenderly and surrounds her helpless body with raging fire, so only the bravest man can approach her. The cover image of an 1895 musical composition Magical Fire containing three "paraphrases" of the opera. (Link1)
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/b10335365
May 22, 2016

15th Century Animal Man
     
An image from 1488 of a figure adorned by animals, from the 1936 Sinnbilder deutscher Volkskunst (Link1; Google Translate; Symbols of German Folk Art), displayed on a twisted cover illustration from a 1985 edition of new Scientist. (Link2). Next to that is a variation of that figure, responding to an instinct to make my pictures "wilder" and less representational. Third picture is another early stick-man symbol from the same source, placed on a drawing of a ruined wall from the 1892 Die Baukunst der Griechen (Link3: Google Translate: Architecture of the Greeks).
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/SinnbilderDeutscherVolkskunst
Link2 archive.org/details/bub_gb_v4aUhsmgm
Link3 archive.org/details/bub_gb_Y71LAAAAMAAJ
May 22, 2016

The Joy of Bathroom Furnishings
 
A composition of two illustrations from the 1956 catalog of bathroom fixtures, Accent on accessories by Hall-Mack. I like the combination of attractive young women modestly dressed in their bathrobes and nightdresses, reflected in mirrors -- something like the mood of the old 1970's Victoria's Secret catalogs (before they turned to exaggerated and aggressive provocation).
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/HallMack
May 21, 2016

Simplified Procedure Images
       
     
Another procedural advance -- after composition, these images went through minimal filtering. Two Photoshop filters (Cutout, PosterEdges), two Gimp filters (DreamSmoothing, Painting), two DreamScope filters (Red/Blue Playing Card, Headcut Portrait) plus a third DreamScope.(Picasso) for color.
First image is composition of two pictures of jewelry from an 1897 Leipzig bookseller's magazine Velhagen & Klasings Monatshefte (Link1).
Second image is from a 1908 edition of that same magazine (Link2): a relief sculpture by Emil Epple showing biblical teenage bombshell Salome posing with the head of John the Baptist.
Third image is an illustration from an edition of 1001 Nights, perhaps the queen Scheherazade acting out one of her stories.
Fourth image is an image from the Plastic Club's Thursday morning Still Life workshop, which I am considering submitting for an upcoming exhibition.
Second row, fifth image, is a variation on a cover of a different issue of the Velhagen & Klasings Monatshefte (Link3), with an elephant motif added in concert with my horrified view of Belusconi-type TV hack Donald Trump as GOP presidential candidate.
Sixth image, from a 1907 issue of the magazine (Link4), seems to be a painting of a group of sirens serenading the crew of a passing ship. The tipoff is the skull in the sand.
Seventh image, from the same issue, part of a painting of a smiling woman relaxing on a sofa by the German artist Eugen Spiro.
The German magazine Velhagen & Klasings Monatshefte is a rich source of images, but when the Nazis came, it toed the party line, publishing the interesting -- if odious -- anti-semitic propagandist Johann von Leers, an aristocrat who, after the war, fled to Argentina and then Egypt, converted to Islam, and secured a post in Nasser's government.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_AF0iAQAAIAAJ
Link2 archive.org/details/bub_gb_nVgiAQAAIAAJ
Link3 archive.org/details/bub_gb_blUiAQAAIAAJ
Link4 archive.org/details/bub_gb_vVYiAQAAIAAJ
May 16, 2016

Gerard Manley Hopkins in Dreamscope Experiment
     
 
Major technical advance. Took a black and white image of religious poet Gerard Manley Hopkins as Content from a 1997 tourist brochure The Gerard Manley Hopkins original in Hopkins House (Link1). Then I used a picture by American artist Stuart Davis (Link2) to provide Style. The result is at right. This marks the first time I've been able to use this essential feature of DreamScope.
Next row, another experiment with this technique, with an advertising image from from the 1918 Motion Picture Magazine (Link3)
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/gerardmanleyhopk00dono
Link2: www.indiana.edu/~iuam/online_modules/picturing_america/resources.php?info=9
Link3 archive.org/details/motionpicturemag14moti
May 15, 2016

Negative Patterns
     
     
First two images are from the 1943 Entomologica Americana (Link1), manipulations of diagrams showing "beautiful and intricate" wasp-like patterns found on various flying insects. (Link1)
Third image is a set of playing tokens from an X-Files-like role-playing game called Agents 200 (Link2).
Second row, fourth image is slides of tissue samples from Menschenaffen (Anthropomorphae); studien über entwickelung und schädelbau (Link3; Google Translate: "Apes (Anthropomorphae) studies on evolution and skull structure").
Fifth image is variations on illustrations of ape skulls from Link3.
Sixth image is a display of engravers' marks (filigrees) from the 1904 Les filigranes avec la crosse de Bâle (Link4).
In all of these, the key artistic element is the tiny patterns that appear in the spaces between the repeating positive elements. So be sure to look at those details by clicking to enlarge the view.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/entomolog232419431944broo
Link2 archive.org/details/THEAGENTS200
Link3 archive.org/details/menschenaffen01sele_1
Link3 archive.org/details/bub_gb_81hGAAAAMAAJ
May 12, 2016

The Grace and Energy of Dance
       
 
The gracefully-posed central figure is German Expressionist dancer Clotilde von Derp from the 1921 Der moderne tanz (Link1: "The Modern Dance"). The two dancers at the bottom of the image are also from that book, showing sisters Grete and Else Weisenthal balancing and reaching out to each other in a horizontal direction. The dancers are placed against a background of a wood carving from the 1846 Album mittelalterlicher Kunst (Link2: "Album of Medieval Art") and a mystical symbol from the 1955 Indian book The Life Divine (Link3) by Indian mystic Sri Auobindo.
Next picture is Clotilde von Derp again, from a different book, the 1920 Lebendige Form : Rhythmus und Freiheit in Gymnastik Sport und Tanz (Link4). Also in the picture are a photograph of the composer's right hand from the 1908 book Franz Liszt (Link5) and program cover from the 1913 Die oper (Link6).
Third image is a casual ink sketch of a dancer (curiously faceless) leaping toward the bottom right corner, trailing a billowing feathered cape behind her. She is placed on a background of a wall composed of a Seattle tourist attraction, a wall of chewed bubble gum wads in a movie theatre parlor (Link7).
Fourth image is a diagram from an early attempt to find a written notation for dance moves, from Link1 It is superimposed on a decorative design from the 1926 A catalogue of perforated metalwork (Link8). Next row, fifth image, from Link1, is Russian ballerina Tamara Karsevina as the Firebird and Michel Fokine as prince Ivan in the 1910 ballet based on Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird. In the background, from the 1847 Le Moniteur des architectes (Link9) is an interior captioned "comptoir d'escompte. grande salle vue prise entre la plafond et le comble vitre" (Google Translate: "discount counter. large room shooting between the ceiling and the glass roof")
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_KRluAAAAMAAJ
Link2: archive.org/details/gri_33125013350265
Link3: archive.org/details/TheLifeDivineSriAurobindo
Link4 archive.org/details/bub_gb_TOBCAAAAIAAJ
Link5: archive.org/details/bub_gb_5rsHAQAAMAAJ
Link6: archive.org/details/bub_gb_NKE5AAAAIAAJ
Link7: imgur.com/kp2f19a
Link8: archive.org/details/ACatalogueOfPerforatedMetalwork_317
Link9 archive.org/details/gri_33125011199029
May 7, 2016

America's Sweetheart on Stack of Gears and Libyan Church Floor
 
Early 20th century movie darling Mary Pickford sits before her dressing table mirrors, in an image from the 1918 Motion Picture Magazine (Link1). That image is superimposed on a technical drawing of gears from a 1916 commercial catalog of Iron and semisteel castings (Link2). Both are then superimposed on an image of a 6th century floor design from the 1987 Earth And Ocean: The Terrestrial World In Early Byzantine Art (Link3).
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/motionpicturemag14moti
Link2: archive.org/details/RMEddyCompany
Link3: archive.org/details/EarthAndOceanTheTerrestrialWorldInEarlyByzantineArtByHenryMaguire
May 5, 2016

A Mayan Queen's Dream of Time Itself on a Chocolate Moon
 
Two Mayan glyphs from the 2009 Maya Numbers and The Mayan Calendar (Link1) by Mark Pitts: to the upper right, the Mayan figure of Time, struggling to pull the passage of days behind him; and to left and lower, a curious depiction of a specific Mayan Queen's Dream. They are shown on a background of chocolate shavings from the undated Encyclopedie Du Chocolat (Link2) and a depiction of a lunar-like cratered surface from the 1913 Hörbigers glacial-kosmogonie, eine neue entwickelungsgeschichte des weltalls und des sonnensystems auf grund der erkenntnis des widerstreites eines kosmischen neptunismus mit einem ebenso universellen plutonismus, nach den neuesten ergebnissen sämtlicher exakter forschungszweige (Link3; Google Translate: "Horbiger glacial cosmogony , a new history of development of the universe and the solar system all on the basis of knowledge of the conflict of a cosmic Neptunism with an equally universal Plutonismus , according to the latest outcomes of exact research branches").
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/TheMayaHieroglyphs02
Link2: archive.org/details/EncyclopedieDuChocolatByFrenchpdf.com
Link2: archive.org/details/bub_gb_NCcVAQAAMAAJ
May 4, 2016

Bronze Standard on a Pattern of Flags
 
A collection of provincial flags from the 1922 Lista oficial de los buques de guerra y de los mercantes de más de 50 toneladas de la Marina Española (Link1) forms the background for an etching of a Roman bronze standard from the 1848 Collectanea antiqua : etchings and notices of ancient remains, illustrative of the habits, customs, and history of past ages (Link2). The standard's letters read "COH OPTIMO MAXIM B", which, the text explains, identifies the standard as being from a Roman legion from the Varduli tribe.
Sources:
Link1 archive.org/details/bibliotecammb14966_1922
Link2: archive.org/details/gri_33125009314713
May 4, 2016

Gear Pattern
 
The altered diagram of a gear from the 1918 automobile manual Das Fahrgestall von Gaskraftwagen (Google Translate: The Fahrgestall Gas Cars; Link1), with a lot of distortion and filtering. (Note: There is an error in the bibliographic information on the page.) The gear design is overlaid on a swirling design from the 1983 As Through A Veil: Mystical Poetry In Islam (Link2), The design dates back to 1650 and is entitled "Mystical Journey."
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/bub_gb_-zlLAAAAMAAJ_2
Link2: archive.org/details/AsThroughAVeilMysticalPoetryInIslamAnnemarieSchimmel1982_201604
May 3, 2016

Frisian Women Costumes
   
From a 1900 German travel book on the Frisian Islands, Deutsche Nordeseeküste, Friesiche Inseln und Helgoland (Link1).
First, a photograph of two women stepping out of a weathered stone house.
Second, three girls on the seashore in traditional costume. This second image introduces two technical innovations: (1) color layer keyed to representation and (2) final step of GIMP black-and-white engrave filter.
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/bub_gb_-94SAAAAYAAJ_2
May 2, 2016

May Day/Greek Easter Pattern
   
A chapter heading from a 1905 German book of Celtic folklore, Wind und Woge; keltische Sagen (Link1). First ornamental design is overlaid with the colors of a design from the 1868 The fleet of an Egyptian queen from the XVII. century before our era and ancient Egyptian military on parade : represented on a monument of the same age, both in some parts restored and published for the first time by the author after a copy taken from the terrace-temple of Dêr-el-Baheri : with an appendix containing the fishes of the Red Sea in the original size of the monument as ornaments beneath the fleet, a number, chronologically arranged, of representations of ancient Egyptian ships and some representations and inscriptions from various temples and tombs which have reference to the preceding (Link2).
The second image is a combination of two images -- a frontispiece and a chapter heading -- from the book of Celtic folklore cited agove (Link1), presumably translated into German.
To appreciate these pieces, click on them so they fill the screen and you can see the intricate patterning within the design.
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/bub_gb_FBMnAAAAMAAJ
Link2: archive.org/details/gri_33125014475335
May 1, 2016

Hollywood Scandal Stories
     
From a 1960 edition of Hollywood gossipmonger Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon II (Link1).
First image is froma photoshoot of actress Pier Angeli. The actress, originally from Sardinia, loved James Dean in full operatic tragedy. After he died, she died from an overdose of barbituates before she turned 40. She was considered for a role in The Godfather, but lost the role and settled for a role in B-movie horror flick called Octaman, shortly before her death.
Second image is an odd publicity shot from the 1958 movie The Party Crashers, featuring two tragic Hollywood figures, Frances Farmer in her last movie role and former child star Bobby Driscoll. They played mother and son. The photo seems to be shot through a basement window. Farmer was wrongfully committed to a mental hospital where she received shock treatments. Driscoll died of a drug overdose in an abandoned Manhattan tenement with no identification and was buried in a pauper's graveyard.
Third image is another weird shot, captioned "Propositioned by a Robot." The provenance is not clear. The actress resembles Joan Crawford. In the lower right, two nude exercise pictures from the 1907 Körperkultur des Weibes praktisch hygienische und praktisch ästhetische Winke, a physical culture handbook (Link2).
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/KennethAngerHollywoodBabylonII1985_201604
Link2: archive.org/details/bub_gb_rd8PAAAAYAAJ
April 27, 2016

Book of Strange Children
     
   
   
Ran across a mysterious Ukrainian book called Ренсом Ріґґз. Дім дивних дітей (Link1: Google Translate: "Ransom Riґґz . House bizarre children"). The description of the book, Google Translated from the Ukrainian, says Sixteen Jacob childhood accustomed to his grandfather's stories about his youth in the distant island county of Wales, in the shelter of strange children: the monsters with triple tongues, the invisible boy, the girl who knew how to fly The only side effect of these inventions were nightmares that tormented teenager. But once broke into a nightmare of his life, killed his grandfather reality. Apparently, the book originates from VKontakt (VK.COM), a Russian language website that bills itself "the largest European social network with over 100 million active users."
Here are some illustrations from this strange book, some overlaid on fancy framing devices. First image is a waif in rags in what seems to be an abandoned country estate. Second image is a figure lit from below, holding some sort of glowing flower or phallus. Third image is a little girl in Mary Janes and frilly dress who casts a weird shadow as if she were floating eight inches above the ground. Fourth image is a woman(?) and child walking out of a deep tunnel. Fifth image is a lovely photograph with a handwritten Ukrainian caption, showing a young girl sitting in chair holding a bowl of fruit and vegetables in her lap. Sixth image is a boy on a suburban sidewalk dressed in a bunny suit. Seventh image is a boy mugging before an unexploded bomb. I can't read the caption, but the first word is a highly literate, comic-book-style "PFFF-T."
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/Miss_P_H_for_P_Children
April 18, 2016

New Webpage Proprietor's Portrait
       
Time to change my image at top of this web page. The new image is a small pencil portrait done by Remo Frangiosa. It was done while I sat for Remo's portrait class over a two-week period at Philadelphia's historic Plastic Club. The previous image was a larger painting I commissioned from the Plastic Club's Andy Hoffmann.

Next are two other images also used as masthead portraits. Third image is an iPad self-portait in a coffee shop (approx. 2014). It is probably the best representation of my revulsion at the aging process and my sadness at the prospect of diminishing cognitive powers. Fourth is an attempt to limit portrait to the fewest number of facial features and still be recognizable (approx. 2012). (Sorry: unlike the other images on this page, these masthead pictures don't enlarge when clicked...)

For other images from the portrait class sitting, see entry for September 22, 2015 -- you'll have to click on the "2015 Archive" link at the top of this page.

South Sea Images
     
 
From the 1907 Te Tohunga; the ancient legends and traditions of the Maoris (Link1). The author and artist is Wilhelm Dittmer, who was born in German and moved to New Zealand. Dittmer's black and white illustrations are marvelous, and in these treatments, I do little more than add color, out of respect for the artist.
The first image is a manipulation of a chapter heading showing a mask with an eyehole pierced by a stick.
The second image seems to be a temple with statues built among rocks.
Third image is Matapo, the old blind man, who recounted to Dittmer the Maori creation myths: "Ah, these are my words to you, my wanderer." In the background, behind Matapo's dead eyes, the burning eyes of a spirit animal.
The fourth image is the artist's conception of the myth of an old-time supernatural battle, captioned "The Battle of the Giants." Part of the color in this image is provided by an underlay of linoleum samples (Link2). Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/bub_gb_Qq7fAAAAMAAJ
Link2: archive.org/details/ArmstrongsRubberTile
April 13, 2016

Variations on 1920 Print Ads
   
From a 1920 issue of the Canadian magazine National Pictorial (Link1), the first image shows a woman drying her hair in an open window, from an ad for a cocoanut oil shampoo. ("brings out the real life and lustre, natural wave and color, and makes your hair soft, fresh and luxuriant.") Background is the same set of linoleum samples (Link2) used in Trilobite image of April 11. A Moore family legend says my paternal grandmother was drying her red hair on the porch one afternoon. A passing artist glimpsed her and used thirty different shades of red to paint her. Nowadays, women use noisy handheld electric hair dryers to blow dry their hair.
Second image shows an Egyptian woman, from an ad for Egyptian Deities brand cigarettes (Link1) in the same magazine. In the background, some more decorative linoleum tiles from the tile catalog (Link2).
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/nationalpictoria00unse
Link2: archive.org/details/ArmstrongsRubberTile
April 12, 2016

Trilobites on Linoleum Samples
 
Five ftrilobite fossils from the 1876 Lethaea geognostica. Handbuch der erdgeschichte mit abbildungen der für die formationen bezeichnendsten versteinerungen (Link1: Google Translate: "Lethaea geognostica . Commission erdgeschichte with illustrations of the most characteristic formations fossils"). They are displayed on a sample page of linoleum from the 1954 The floor for atmosphere of luxury and refinement: Armstrong's rubber tile (Link2). I like trilobites because their design is so simple and familiar -- yet they died out in a mass extinction event about 250 million years ago. Horseshoe crabs are distant ancestors.
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/bub_gb_csYQAAAAIAAJ
Link2: archive.org/details/ArmstrongsRubberTile
April 11, 2016

Lady Gardener Tends to Business
 
A woman reaches up to prune the top of a house plant, from an engraving in the 1874 issue of the Canadian illustrated magazine, The Favorite.
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/McGillLibrary-The-Favorite_vol-03-no-10_March-07-1874-15940
April 11, 2016

Millwork (Lumber) Catalog Caprices
     
The first image is a composition composed of elements from the 1925 millwork catalog by A. Teachout Co. (Link1): an illustration of a glamorous lady descending a staircase to answer the front door, placed on a background of a peneled door. Second image is a happy couple embracing next to their new wooden door. Third image are two vertical wooden knobs from the millwork catalog, placed against two stencils from an 1898 Catalogue of window shades and shade hardware, paper hangers tools and supplies (Link2) and a circular plate design from the 1896 Ueber fremde einflusse in der chinesischen kunst (Link3; Google Translate: "About foreign influence in Chinese art").
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/TeachoutMillwork
Link2: archive.org/details/NationalWallPaperCo
Link3: archive.org/details/bub_gb_DdBJAAAAMAAJ
April 8, 2016

Theosophical Imaginings
     
In the late 19th century, when Theosophy was in full flower, adherents published a magazine called The Sphinx, often with illustrations by an artist who signed his work Fidus. Here, from an 1886 issue, an illustration captioned "Dream." Second image is a girl, communing with nature -- and a lizard which suns itself on the rock they share. Third image is another characteristic Fidus illustration, a slim young girl sitting on rocks, while in the sky behind her a mysterious figure appears in the clouds.
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/bub_gb_3nwsAAAAYAAJ
April 4, 2016

Murder Most Foul
 
From the 1900 Der Richter und die Rechtspflege in der deutschen Vergangeheit : mit 159 Abbildungen und Beilagen nach den Originalen aus dem fünfzehnten bis achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Link1; Google Translate: "The judge and the administration of justice in the German Vergangeheit : with 159 illustrations and supplements to the originals from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century").
This woodcut illustrates a murder in the woods. The victim is in the lower right. The image is captioned "Ulrich of Württemberg murdered Hans von Hutten." Wikipedia explains the motive: "[Ulrich's] marriage was a very unhappy one, and having formed an affection for the wife of a knight named Hans von Hutten, a kinsman of Ulrich von Hutten, the Duke killed Hans in 1515 during an altercation." The murdering Duke had to flee in exile, but in time he returned as "Ulrich the Peasant" during the German Peasant's War in 1524-25. However, some sources dispute this story. Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/bub_gb_zHf18Zx181cC
April 2, 2016

Ogress on Wooden Ornament
 
A whimsical collage. An illustration from the 1898 The Arabian nights' entertainments (Link1), showing an ogress. In the background above and behind her, some ornaments based on English plants from the 1849 Art Journal (Link2). Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/McGillLibrary-rbsc_bourke_arabian-nights-entertainment_PJ7715L361898-15699
Link2: archive.org/details/gri_33125006187500
April 1, 2016

Calligraphic Initial Capitals
     
   
Distorted and recolored images from the 1882 Initial-Ornamentik des VIII bis XIII Jahrhunderts ("Ornamental Initials from the 8th to 13 Centuries") (Link1). First image is an initial "L" dated 990 AD from the Echternach Abbey, a Benedictine Monastery in Luxembourg. Second image is an initial "U" (I think) from a manuscript produced in the German town of Triere in 1378. Third image is a capital "Q" from the same source. Fourth image is a 12th century capital "P" from an English Romanesque letter from the 1919 classic The Styles of ornament : from prehistoric times to the middle of the XIXth century ; a series of 3500 examples arranged in historical order with descriptive text for the use of architects, designers, craftsmen and amateurs (Link2), labeled as being by "Josephus and other masters." Fifth image is from a manuscript created in Cologne, German, in Link1 again,

• The City Overlooking the Sea: Cyprus
• The City of Red and Grey: London
• Land of Palm Trees and Olives: Israel
• City of Sindbad: Baghdad
• City of Siege and War: Beirut

Linoleum Flag with Woodcutter Eagle
 
Spanish artist Woodcutter Manero recently added another font, a "dingbat" symbol font. Here is one of his Eagle designs, laid on a pattern of linoleum samples from the 1956 ceramic tile catalog of American-Olean Tile Company (Link1). .
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/CeramicTileBooklet207
March 27, 2016

Aphorism from Arabic Novel
 
Another printers ornament from the 1904 issue of a German architectural magazine, Deutsche Bauzeitung, used as a setting for a line ("Every road has its walker") from a translation (from the Arabic) of a magical realist novel, The Book of the Sultan's Seal, by Egyptian writer Youssef Rakha. The saying is, to me, a sad acknowledgement that, in American terms, "you play the cards you're dealt." I haven't been happy with my situation this Easter weekend. The font is Woodcutter Future by that talented Spanish bad boy Woodcutter Manero.
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/bub_gb_z43mAAAAMAAJ
March 27, 2016

Spring/Easter Meditations
   
First image is a seasonal message, combining Belle Epoque font with an Art Nouveau decorative frame from a 1904 issue of a German architectural magazine, Deutsche Bauzeitung.
I have religious feelings about the Easter holiday, mainly stirred by childhood memories of the intense step-by-bloody-step visualization of the Crucifixion of Jesus in Catholic Good Friday services. I have even composed a melodic poem/hymn about it.

Keep the silence
Won'cha keep the silence
Won'cha keep the silence
'Cuz a man dies young

Scrubbed-Up Ladies in Colorful 50's Bathrooms
 
A collage of different bathroom layouts from the 1953 American Standard catalog of bathroom fixtures, Plus value for your home (Link1). Six of the ladies pictured are "real" and three of them are just reflections in a mirror.
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/PlusValueForYourHomeAmericanStandard
March 25, 2016

Unknown Craftsman of Ink Drawings and a Sidebar on the Kurds
     
An unidentified artist did a series of illustrations for Edison Mazda in the 1920's, advertising the wonders of light bulbs. The caption for this illustration was "The Well-Lighted Corner has the Well-Worn Chair." This is from a 1925 issue of the Canadian humor magazine, The Goblin (Link1). The second image shows a Chritmastime scene, made brighter by a tungsten filament bulb. Third image shows a daughter confiding in mother, headlined "The Party After the Party."
I added color, and some distortion of the lines, but if you examine closely the draftsmanship is superb. I can find no attribution, but could the artist have been Philadelphia illustrator Maxfield Parrish, who did color calendars for Edison Mazda?

Scottish Designs
     
Recently ran across the archived collection of the Glasgow School of Art Library. The art scene in that Scottish town was the source of some powerful and distinctive ornament and designers, often very geometric. Here, treatments of pages from Kunstgewerbliche Schmuckformen fur die Flache v.I: Monatshefte fur die verzierende Kunst (Google Translate: "Handicraft jewelery forms for the Flat v.I : Monatshefte for the decorating Art") (Link1), one of the books in the Glasgow School of Arts' library.
Third image is a casual pen drawing of a little girl from a 1920 issue of the Canadian humor magazine The Goblin (Link2). She is overlaid on a diagram of geometric constructions from the Glasgow Art School's copy of the 1849 The infinity of geometric design exemplified (Link3).
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/kunstgewerbliche00anon
Link2: archive.org/details/infinityofgeomet00bill
Link3: archive.org/details/goblin00unse
March 20, 2016

Surveyor's Vision
 
Two charts overlaid from an 1872 German surveyor's manual, Zeitschrift für Vermessungswesen (Link1). Image represents a couple technical breakthroughs: erase black and add noise to border.
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/bub_gb_o5tIAAAAMAAJ
March 19, 2016

Letterforms and Decoration
 
An alphabet from an undated Italian handwriting textbook Caligrafia Curso Completo (Link 1), overlaid by a pattern for a wooden mantel from the 1900 Patterns of grilles, mantels, wood carpet (Link2),
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/CALIGRAFIACURSOCOMPLETO
Link2: archive.org/details/FosterMungerCo
March 18, 2016

Irish on my Mind
 
From the 1922 A miscellany of Irish proverbs (Link1). Happy St. Patrick's Day. On my mind because of an upcoming co-op political issue.
Font is Celtic Hand.
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/miscellanyofiris00orah
March 17, 2016

Book Notes: Neurotribes
 
Just finished a 500-page book, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman, a present from a relative who has an autistic family member.
Two quick notes:
Pictured above: in one incident, a clergyman asked a class to write a new set of commandments "better than God's". One autistic student began with the First Commandment pictured above.
Maybe later: an innovation at conferences for autists. They provide nametags (Interaction Signal Badges) with three optional settings:

1. Red: "Nobody should try to interact with me."
2. Yellow: "Only people I aleady know should interact with me, not strangers."
3. Green: "I want to interact but am having trouble initiating, so please initiate an interaction with me."

Periodic Table
 
An experiment: running my filter sequence on a cartoonized periodic table of the elements, published by Indian science popularizer Arvind Gupta.
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/PeriodicTableOfTheElements
March 16, 2016

Spirit of Liberation
 
Image of a red-gowned goddess of liberty, wearing the bonnet rouge, the red cap of liberty. She swings a rifle as a club to clobber (in lower right, from top) a policeman, a money-grubbing banker, and a clergyman. It's from the cover of a score for the 1880 song La Sociale.
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/McGillLibrary-music_fsm_f958-15798
March 12, 2016

Revisiting Dutch Windmills
   

Early Radio Scenes
   
Image from the 1925 Montgomery Ward Radio Catalog.
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/RadioMontgomeryWard
March 11, 2016

A.A. Milne's Princesses of Imaginary Lands
     
   
Images by book illustrator Charles Robinson of little princesses in fantasy land, for A.A. Milne's 1922 Once On A Time.
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/onceontime00miln
March 8, 2016

Remembering Karen Carpenter
 
Watched a TV special on the 1970-1980's ballad singer Karen Carpenter, shown here playing her first instrument, the drums. She was noteworthy for her tragic death at 33 from Anorexia Nervosa and her sublime contralto voice. Here's a 6-minute NPR feature about her life, Here's another sample: Rainy Days and Mondays.
Sadly, I dismissed her at the time because she was not fashionable.

Chinese Box Design on Desert Caravan
 
An illustration from a 1940's children's book, The Negro and the Antelope (Link1), showing a caravan heading toward the Sultan's palace. Superimposed lightly on that illustration, a decoration from the top of a Chinese rosewood box, from the 1855 A catalogue of the Museum of Ornamental Art, at Marlborough House, Pall Mall (Link2)
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/McGillLibrary-130046-5084
Link2: archive.org/details/S00022921
March 5, 2016

Heartless Teenager
 
The face of an 18-year-old girl, Michelle Carter, who faces manslaughter charges for allegedly driving her boyfriend to commit suicde, with mesaages like "You always say you’re gonna do it [suicide], but you never do." Filters used Picasso II, Citradelic, and Playing Card.
Source: NA
March 4, 2016

Patriotic Flag Lady on Tile Pattern
 
Against a backround of color tile samples from the 1956 catalog of American Olean Tile Company (Link1), another cover from an 1896 piece of sheet music, Les Trois couleurs, ou ,quand je vois nos trois couleurs (link2) (Google Translate: The Three Colors, or,When I see our Three Colors, I sing) showing a woman waving the French flag,
Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/CeramicTileBooklet207
Link2: archive.org/details/McGillLibrary-music_fsm_f995-15801
March 3, 2016

Floral Music Girl on Tile Pattern
 
Against a backround of color tile samples from the 1956 catalog of American Olean Tile Company (Link1), a graphic lady in blue rises from rococco floral decoration, from the cover of an 1896 piece of French sheet music, Au Pays Bleu (Link2).
Note: Tutorial on neural net system used in graphic "deep dream learning".
Also, interesting documentary on financial system collapse.

Sources:
Link1: archive.org/details/CeramicTileBooklet207
Link2: archive.org/details/McGillLibrary-music_fsm_f975-15831
March 2, 2016

Art Teacher's Piano Top Decor
 
To make a long story short, my art teacher's car got wrecked and I offered to sell her my car. She was hobbled by injuries from the wreck, so I drove out to her house Monday to deliver the car and do the paperwork. This is a glimpse inside her house, a suburban family home full of bright paintings and dark heirloom furniture. The picture shows the eclectic collection of doo-dads on top of her piano.
This is the first time I have been without a car for a long time. It will help our fixed-income budget, but I miss at least the possibility of impulsive escape.
Source: My cell-phone photograph
March 2, 2016

Various Experiments with Filters on Old German Magazine
     
     
 
I do these shortened, picture-heavy postings when I'm too busy or too absorbed to do the full detailed bibliographic work. It's a shame, because one of the things I like to do is write.
Discovered a German magazine called Der Querschnitt (the Cross Section; Link1) which was to be shut down by the Nazis. It's something like the American Life Magazine. In the first picture, a girl's rowing team carries their boat out to a smooth lake.
In the next row, picture is from a different issue of Der Querschnitt (Link2). The editor, Alfred Flechtheim, had a habit of putting two stylistically related pictures on the same page -- like rhymes or coincidences. Here, he combines a blockish modernist statue (by Artistide Maillol) with a smiling photo of Spanish cabaret performer Laura Pinilla. Flechtheim's work is instructive to me in learning how to build collages out of such nonobvious graphical relationships.
Source:
Link5: archive.org/details/McGillLibrary-116658-562
Link6: archive.org/details/McGillLibrary-116651-555
February 28, 2016

Various Experiments with Filters on Public Domain Documents
       
     
     

I do these shortened, picture-heavy posts when I'm too busy or too absorbed to do full bibliographic work. It's a shame, because one of the things I like to do is write.
First image: two pictures of a trilobyte fossil, plus a dozing bear, all displayed on a wildly patterned book cover. Other pictures, experiments with my current graffiti/card method, happening too fast to keep track of sources. Many sources are Link1. Engraving/engineering pictures are from Link2. In the third row, the woman's face is from Why Catholics Pray to the Blessed Virgin (Link3), a 1907 painting by "Marianne Stokes entitled "Madonna and Child." Next one combines a carpet background with an illustration from the 1890 A Connecticutt Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Link3) by Mark Twain, showing an Arthurian "band with cymbals, harps, horns, and other horrors". Last picture in third row is a corset ad from the 1916 Montgomery Ward Catalog (Link4) -- the source of many of the patterns in this series. The NEMO corset "lifts and supports the most important vital organs."

Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/nvasouenir192307nati
Link2: archive.org/details/AmericanWoodWorkingMachineCo.Compete
Link3: archive.org/details/connecticutyanke00twaiuoft
Link4: archive.org/details/MontgomeryWard1916
February 20, 2016

Garbo, Heiroglyphics, Flags
 
A pic of Greta Garbo from the 1923 National Vaudeville Souvenir (Link1), combined with Egyptian hierographics and a Flags of the Nations page.
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/nvasouvenir192307nati
February 19, 2016

No Bizness like Show Bizness
 
Top left, a fashion drawing. Middle, a publicity photo of actress Mabel Ford. Bottom, a clown. All from the 1923 National Vaudeville Souvenir (Link1)
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/nvasouvenir192307nati
February 18, 2016

Fate Plays Cards with Man over Dish Set
 

Source:

February 17, 2016

Dancers Behind a Hotel Barbershop Mirror
   
Another attempt at communicating my fascination with mirrors. Foreground is a 2 basin/3 mirror setup from the 1931 barbershop catalog Mirror cases by Kochs. (Link1) Behind the usual artist's shading depicting the mirrors is a fascinating image from the 1923 National Vaudeville Souvenir (Link2), a publicity still (shown at right) of the Maria Morgan Dancers The California house shared by Morgan and film director Dorothy Arzner is on a list of LGBT historical sites. The graceful dancers -- in the Isadora Duncan tradition -- are the epitome of feminine beauty. But they could be 16-year-olds.
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/MirrorCasesByKochs
Link2: archive.org/details/nvasouvenir192307nati
February 15, 2016

Helmet, Kissy Mirror, Alien
 
In the middle, an actress kisses her reflection in a mirror from the 1923 National Vaudeville Souvenir (Link1). In the background, a photo of a combat vehicle gas mask, the FM51 from Avon Products (Link2). At bottom, a drawing of an alien from Blue Planet Project UFO TECHNOLOGY (Link3).
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/nvasouvenir192307nati
Link2: archive.org/details/AvonFM51Prospekt
Link3 archive.org/details/BluePlanetProjectUFOTECHNOLOGY_201602
--> February 15, 2016

Carpenter's Daydream
 
A workman installing a door in a 1929 catalog of millwork The Pease pricer (Link1), with an inset into the picture of the seamy cover from a 1960 paperback Untamed Lust (Link2).
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/ThePeasePricer129
Link2: archive.org/details/UntamedLust
February 14, 2016

Meditations on Mirrors
   
   
   
I have long been fascinated by artists' depiction of the hazy reflections in mirrors. So many removes from reality: the right-to-left world reflected left-to-right on a mirror, the artist removed from physical reality, the patterns on the depicted mirror removed from the hypothetical reality reflected in the mirror. Plus my own digital hallucination-making. Here are some variations on a 1931 catalog drawing of mirrors designed for fancy barbershops, the kind you'd see in downtown hotels, Mirror cases by Kochs. (Link1) Am enjoying the application of my latest technique -- two overlaid Dreamscape filters, Graffiti and Playing Card. If Dreamscape ever goes down, then might be able to duplicate loop with GMIC filters Stencil, Lyjek's Stencil, Old School 8 Bits, Edge Offsets, Thin Edges, Cartoon, Graphic Novel, Painting, Black Crayon Graffiti, Chalk It Up, Engrave, Gradient Norm, Isophotes, Mask Creator, Spotify, Marble, Mineral Mosaic, Shock Waves,
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/MirrorCasesByKochs

February 12, 2016

Refugee with Text
 

Source:
NA
February 11, 2016

Twenties Housewife Tending House Plant
 

Source:
Link2: archive.org/details/HartmansModernHome

February 10, 2016

Tintoretto Sea Battle Scene
 
From an 1871 reissue of The book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, concerning the kingdoms and marvels of the East : newly translated and edited with notes (Link1), an engraved detail of a Tintoretto painting, used to show maritime construction. The image is placed on a barely visible illustration from the 1924 Hartman's modern home magazine (Link2).
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/bookofsermarcop01polo
Link2: archive.org/details/HartmansModernHome

February 8, 2016

Arab Street Scenes
   
From the 1905 Der kleine Krieg in Afrika : aus der Erinnerungs- und Bilder-Mappe eines Offiziers der französischen Fremden-Legion (Google Translate: The little war in Africa : from the memory and images Binder of an officer of the French Foreign Legion), left, two women preparing food in Morocco, and right, two Berber women discussing the day's events.
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/bub_gb_IN8TAAAAIAAJ
February 7, 2016

Aleppo Bird
   
Totally confused amd horrified by the Syrian Civil War. The Geneva Peace Talks were cancelled because of bloody bombing by Russia and Assad of old, old Aleppo. I find shelter from the horror of that five-year-old conflict -- which my own country bears partial responsibility for -- in color and pattern and history. Generally, I feel as if we're heading toward World War III. We're at the Spanish Civil War stage -- a brutal local conflict over government succession, fought by proxies, and used to perfect major powers' equipment and tactics.
Here is a picture of a Kata bird from Aleppo -- "[T]he flesh is so black and hard and dry that the Europeans never touch them" -- from the 1756 The natural history of Aleppo, and parts adjacent. Containing a description of the city, and the principal natural productions in its neighbourhood; together with an account of the climate, inhabitants, and diseases; particularly of the plague, with the methods used by the Europeans for their preservation.
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/naturalhistoryof00russ

February 6, 2016

The Syrian Situation
Note: This entry is disorganized, will eventually be rewritten.
   
    Bored with Art for Art's Sake and by the U.S. elections (Go Bernie), I have turned my attention to the Middle East. The situation is developing like the run-up to World War I, and I am determined to try to understand it:
Here, neighbors climb over rubble and fruit from an overturned cart caused by three bombs set off yesterday near the Sayyidah Zaynab mosque on the outskirts of Damascus. The mosque, sacred to Shiite Muslims, is said to be the grave of the granddaughter of Mohammed. Fifty people were reportedly killed; ISIS/ISIL/The Islamic State (identified with Sunni Muslims) claimed responsibiity. The blast was apparently aimed at disrupting proximity talks talks convened by the UN in Geneva. So far, two parties have appeared: (1) Assad's Syrian government, which is backed by Shiite Iran, Russia, and China; and (2) the High Negotiations Committee which is calling for the removal of Assad, which is backed by Saudi Arabia, Other companies calling for regime change include the United States, France, England, Germany, Jordan, Qatar, Turkey and Israel. I will be following these talks closely. Al Jazeera has a 24-hour feed.
Here is my tentative chart of the four players in the Geneva talks:

Pro-Assad Shiite	Anti-Assad Sunni	"Terrorist"	Kurds
Syria, Iran, Russia and China	Saudi Arabia, U.S., France, England, Germany, Jordan, Qatar, Turkey, and Israel	ISIS, ISIL, Islamic State	Kurds

Al Jazeera is one of the most active sources covering the Geneva talks on Syria.
Another source is Al Arabiya.
Here's Twitter page of Steffan de Mistura, the patrician UN mediator, and of Kurds in Syria, who are excluded from the talks.
Changing Nature of Syrian Civil War 2011-2015
Isis & Geneva Talks
Al Arabiya-English
Peace Talks Falter
Kurdish Twitter
Russian vie
Saudi twitter

#YPG #SAA #FSA #RuAF #Putin #Assad
These two flags have not #future in #Syria because both of them include no #Kurds pic.twitter.com/wGDMdKCOAz

— 我是小小庫爾德人 (@JPY_Kurdish) January 16, 2016

Indigenous Women
     

Source:

January 28, 2016

Human Sacrifice over Chimera
   

Source:

January 27, 2016

A Queen Has Died
 

Source:
NA
January 26, 2016

Lady Behind Tunnels
 
Three images in a collage:

• An ink drawing used in an advertisement from the 1908 Deutsche UhrmacherZeitung (Link1), showing a fashionable lady napping next to an alarm clock
• From the 1908 Königin Luise. Ein Lebensbild (Link2), a circular chapter heading decoration showing a drooping lily, barbed wire, and palm fronds
• From the 1864 Zeitschrift für Bauwesen (Link3), two diagrams showing the wood beam patterns used to shore up early tunnels

Happy Happy Heated Homes
 
A collage of images from the 1940 Better heating air conditioning better plumbing makes better homes (Link1), placed on a sample of wallpaper from the 1945 Imperial washable wallpapers (Link2)
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/HeatingPlumbingMakesBetterHomes
Link2: archive.org/details/ImperialWashableWallpapers

January 24, 2016

ISIS Update
 
Images from the propaganda magazine of ISIS, a slick production called Dabiq. The latest issue is out (Link1) and it is full of images of brutality perpetrated by ISIS. In this collage, there is (center) the burning alive of a captured Jordanian pilot; above that, a march of Coptic prisoners to their death in Egypt, and, top right, the execution of a "sodomite" by throwing him off a roof. At the bottom, ISIS soldiers clasp hands in solidarity.
One of the especially scary articles is Islam is the Religion of the Sword Not Pacifism, which extensively quotes the Koran to make the point that there must be constant warfare until the end of days when "Isa [Jesus] kills the Dajjal [Antichrist]" and thereafter "Islam and its justice will prevail on earth" -- a variation of the Christian vision of the Apocalypse. A previous issue offered justification in the Koran for the sexual slavery of women from other faiths.
ISIS' behavior -- grotesque brutality committed with one eye on the video camera -- leaves me puzzled. Most brutal regimes try to hide their crimes. I would be tempted to join the chorus of voices calling for a military expedition against ISIS, but I suspect that that is exactly what ISIS' backers want. Hold off until we figure out exactly where ISIS lines up in the polarities of Middle Eastern politics, Sunni/Shiite, Israel/Oil, etc. Meantime, let ISIS' neighbors handle it -- and abandon the goal of regime change in Syria.
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/dahiq13

January 24, 2016

Dark Side, Fear of Extinction
 
Some fearful images superimposed on another wallpaper pattern from the Style trend wallpapers 1952 showings (Link1),

• Two skulls (bottom left and right) from the 1867 Archiv für Anthropologie, Völkerforschung und kolonialen Kulturwandel (Link2)
• A body bound in a band as part of a funeral ritual from a 1907 Archiv für Anthropologie, Völkerforschung und kolonialen Kulturwandel (Link3)
• A diseased man holding up his hands (source not recorded)

Berber Girl and Allegory Babes on Wallpaper
 
On a background of a wallpaper sample from the Style trend wallpapers 1952 showings (Link1), two pictures are inset.
At top left, from an 1888 edition of National Geographic (link2), a photo of a girl in Tunisia. The National Geographic photographer (Franklin Knott) explains: like the other girls in Michelet, Tunisia, [this girl] eluded the artist for many days. As fleet of foot as a gazelle, she would have made her escape had not the Mother Superior of the government hospital persuaded her to pose for the stranger, which she did with unconscious grace.
The other picture is an allegorical picture, labeled "Unity, Peace and Plenty" from the 1898 History of Freemasonry (Link3), with three posing women: (left a winged angel hold a branch; center, a toga'd and tiara'd figure holding a fasces; right, a naked girl holding a horn of plenty/cornucopia overflowing with produce.) (Link3).
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/StyleTrendWallpapers0001
Link2: archive.org/details/bub_gb_rgcVAAAAYAAJ
Link3: archive.org/details/MackeyHistoryT6
January 21, 2016

Maine Scenes
   
Another source of public domain images is Flickr's collection of the archives of institutions. The latest institution to join is The Camden (Maine) Public Library. Here is one of the collection's photos, a 1923 of a boat shed in Camden Harbor (Link1). Next to that is a 1904 photo of the road along Camden's Turnpike Drive (Link2).
Source:
Link1: www.flickr.com/photos/cplmaine/23165167202
Link2: www.flickr.com/photos/cplmaine/20207577935

January 19, 2016

Old Men and Young Girls
 
German writer Gerhart Hauptmann authored a play called Kaiser Karls Geisel, which tells a story about Charlegmagne. Here's one summary: The 80-year-old emperor Charlemagne falls for the 16-year-old hostage Gersuind, who is unprincipaled [sic] and uninhibited - an incarnation of the Saxon spirit. At last he must realize that he has been neglecting affairs of state while spending time trying to teach virtue to this heathen hussy, and he sends her to a convent. There, she redeems herself; she drinks poison and dies a holy death. Legendarily, Charlemagne did have a concubine or consort named 'Gersuinda of Saxon'.
The old king's interest in the young girl found its parallel on stage. The 16-year-old actress who played Gersuinda, Ida Orloff, became a mistress to 44-year-old Hauptmann. The affair ended; Orloff went on to be an author and translator, ended up committing suicide in Vienna in 1945 fearing wartime rape. Her picture in the role of Gersuinda appeared in a 1906 edition of the arts magazine Westermanns Monatshefte (Link1). Here two of Orloff's pictures are laid over a background of four different colored Japanese prints from another edition of Westermanns Monatshefte (Link2).
Source:
Link1 archive.org/details/bub_gb_-xEMAAAAYAAJ Link2: archive.org/details/bub_gb_tR8_AQAAMAAJ

January 18, 2016

School Science in India
     
Designs based on headings from a recent children's science textbook in Hindi by the educational group Bal Vaigbanyik. The illustrator has a playful, fluent style in their line drawings. The book was uploaded by Indian educator Arvind Gupta. Middle image is a single illustration. Right one is a detail from one of the chapter headings.
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/NHM177028

January 16, 2016

Monkey Puzzle Tree
 
An Auraucaria Imbracata of South America (also known as the Monkey Puzzle Tree) from the 1875 Die Neuere Schopfungsgeschichte nach dem gegenwurtigen Stande der Naturwissenschaften (Link1).
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/NHM177028

January 16, 2016

Collage: Flying Child, XIII Death Card, Mounted Knight
 

• The floating, blonde-haired child is from a Soviet children's book Northern Lights Fairy Tales of the People of the North (Link 1)
• The XIII death card is from the 1906 Les cartes à jouer du XIV au XX siècle (Link2)
• The knight and equestrian armor is from the 1908 Zeitschrift für historische Waffenkunde (Link3)

Solitary Woman Staring Out Window
 
A painting called "The Window" by the German Impressionist Lesser Ury, from the 1906 cultural magazine Westermanns Monatshefte.
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/bub_gb_tR8_AQAAMAAJ

January 12, 2016

Intimidating Eyes
 
I recently was talking to someone with Asperger's, and when I asked her why she didn't look people in the eye when they were talking, she said "Eyes are intimidating." She said the increase in the number of diagnosed "Aspies" may be evolutionary. This piece is drawn from my thinking about what she said about eyes. It's a collage of two pictures from 940's Catholic Church pamphlets, recently uploaded by Notre Dame University.

• Cover drawing of a couple from the 1941 The ideal marriage : how achieve it? (Link1)
• Cover photo of a woman making a "Oh-No" face in a 1945 sermon-in-a-play The brewing storm (Link2)

Turbines and Numbers
 

• Turbines installed at a generating plant at Shawanigan Falls, Quebec, from a 1921 issue of Canadian Illustrated Monthly (Link1)
• Overlaid on the turbines, a diagram showing a hand-count numbering system, from an unknown book.

Family Visit
   

• In the foreground, in stark black & white, some long skinny Chinese playing cards from the 1876 A descriptive catalogue of playing and other cards in the British museum, accompanied by a concise general history of the subject and remarks on cards of divination and of a politico-historical character (Link1)
• Behind those Chinese cards, barely visible, some European playing cards from the same source.
• Finally, in bright bright blue behind the cards, a compass rose from the 1883 Summer excursionist : Central Vermont RR (link2), showing points that can be reached by that railroad.

Eagle Artist Card Clock
 

• The colorful picture of the artist and eagle is from a Soviet children's book Northern Lights Fairy Tales of the People of the North (Link 1)
• The design of clock faces is from another Soviet children's book, Clocks and Watches (Link2)
• More playing cards from 1876 A descriptive catalogue of playing and other cards in the British museum, accompanied by a concise general history of the subject and remarks on cards of divination and of a politico-historical character (Link3)

Playing Card Double Image
 
An experimental image, learning to calibrate angles in frames. Image is an old playing card, from the 1906 Les cartes à jouer du XIV au XX siècle (Link1).
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/McGillLibrary-122624-2082
January 6, 2016

Jewelry, Indian Lady, Cell Phone
 

• Another painting by Indian artist Raja Ravi Varma of an Indian woman arranging her hair (Link1)
• A detail from an illustration from the November 2015 issue of Men's Health, showing a man holding a cell phone displaying a picture of a woman. (Link2)
• Scattered behind are details of design from an 1880 jewelry catalog,Die Perle : Weltorgan für Juwelengold und Silverarbeiter unter Mitwirkung hervorragender Künstler und mit Unterstützung des hiesigen K. K. Museum für Kunst und Industrie (Link3)

Lady, Abs, & Skeletons
 
A collage based on three sources:

• A detail from an advertisement featuring a man's sculpted abs from a November 2015 issue of Men's Health, turned sideways, with his head towards the right. (Link1)
• A painting by celebrated Indian artist Raja Ravi Varma of an Indian woman standing against a wall(Link2)
• More Danse Macabre skeletons in an illustration in a 1901 monograph Le danze macabre in Italia (Link3), one in the center and some along the right side.

Three Horizon/Frame Pairs
 
A collage based three sources:

• An advertisement featuring brightly colored healthy foods from a November 2015 issue of Men's Health (Link1)
• A painting by celebrated Indian artist Raja Ravi Varma of a seated Indian woman (Link2)
• A photograph of a sunset through an airplane window uploaded to Reddit (Link3)

15th Century and 21st Century Death
 
A collage based on two sources:

• A procession of death in a 15th century Italian fresco: a danza macabra of skeletons come to collect the dying, alternating with their targets, an illustration in a 1901 monograph Le danze macabre in Italia.
• The cover of the latest DABIQ magazine (Link1), the propaganda/recruiting magazine of the brutal "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL/ISIS/IS). (The Levant is composed of "Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey.) This November 2015 issue crows about the shootings in Paris and the downing of an airliner. An earlier issue gives a theologicl justification for the sexual slavery of Yazidi women. Here's a site that follows DABIQ.

Dance Macabre: Abbot and Pipes
 
A clergyman is hauled off by skeletal death in an image from the 1902 The Dance of Death in a series of engravings on wood from designs attributed to Hans Holbein with a treatise on the subject by Francis Douce, also Holbein's Bible cuts consisting of ninety engravings on wood with an introduction by Thomas Frognall Dibdin (Link1). The accompanying text explains: "Death, having despoiled him of his mitre and crozier,[the Abbot] resists with all his might." The action takes place partly obscured by a design composed of plumbing fixtures from the 1929 Metal Woodworkers' Tools, specifically "double bracket basin cocks".(Link2).
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/TheDanceOfDeathDibdin
Link3 archive.org/details/MilwaukeeBrassManufacturingCompany0001
January 2, 2016

Little Girl in Catalog Landscape
 
At the top, barely visible, another image from the hellish visions of the 1782 La Tentation de Saint Antoine : ornée de figures et de musique (The Temptation of St. Anthony (Link1)). In the middle, a little girl stares at her reflection in a plate mirror door from a 1920 catalog from Chicago and Riverdale Lumber Co., Catalogue no. 41: high grade interior trim, built in furniture, sash doors, hardwood flooring, lumber and hardware (Link2). From the same source, in the middle, some art crystal glass windows. Finally, two copies of a solid steel shaper cutter from the 1929 Metal Woodworkers' Tools (Link3).
Source:
Link1: archive.org/details/McGillLibrary-rbsc-volt_tentation-saint-antoine_PQ2066S6T41781-15401
Link2 archive.org/details/ChicagoandRiverdaleLumberCo.0001
Link3 archive.org/details/MilwaukeeBrassManufacturingCompany0001
January 1, 2016

Mother & Daughter Moment over Maps
 
A picture of Ukrainian politician Julia Tymoshenko with her daughter Eugenia from an article, Lobbyarbeit Tymoschenko 52 15 (Link1). The picture is overlaid on a collage of weather maps of Europe and the Middle East from Computer modelling in atmospheric and oceanic sciences : building knowledge (Link2).
Source:
Link1 archive.org/details/LobbyarbeitTymochenko5215
Link2: archive.org/details/springer_10.1007-978-3-662-06381-1 December 31, 2015

Bathtub Time & The Sufferings of St. Anthony
   
Two bathroom scenes from the 1955 New Ideas in Tile catalog(Link1), with insets of illustrations from the 1782 La Tentation de Saint Antoine : ornée de figures et de musique (The Temptation of St. Anthony (Link2)).
Source:
Link1 archive.org/details/NewIdeasInTile
Link2: archive.org/details/McGillLibrary-rbsc-volt_tentation-saint-antoine_PQ2066S6T41781-15401 December 30, 2015

New Year Reorganization
 
As another calendar page flutters away -- my 71st -- it's time to put away last year's Philly Bob's Free for All into the 2015 Archive. I also insert a link to the archive in the upper right corner of the masthead, along with other years.
To mark the occasion, a typographical treatment of the year, using a decoration from the 1560 Ornement de Ducerceau (Link1), which contains architectural and ornamental work of the du Cerceau family. The font is Unlearned Bitmap by font designer Brian Kent, also known as Aenigma.
Source:
Link1 archive.org/details/ornementdeducerc00andr
December 29, 2015

To contact Philly-Bob, email me at bobmoore [at symbol] pobox.com (of course, replace "[at symbol]" with "@"].
Masthead Portrait by Remo Frangiosa, 2015