3 Free eBooks – December 2017

This month I picked books with an Asian theme:

Bing, Siegfried. Artistic Japan: illustrations and essays. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co. Six volumes available from the Internet Archive here; published in the late 1800s. Most of the illustrations are in color…and represent a broad range of Japanese art from the time. I picked an image of a textile but there is a lot of other types of art in these volumes.

Ando, Hiroshige. Ehon Edo miyage. Kikuya Kozaburo han. 1850 or after and before 1868. Six volumes available from Smithsonian Libraries here. Images in soft colors depicting Japan in the mid 1800s. I picked one from the fourth volume that looked like a road lined with cherry trees blooming in the spring. There were some other images of landscapes with snow that I liked almost as well.

Oriental Textile Samples. 1700. Available from the Internet Archive here. This book is a reminder of how rich the textile tradition is – particularly from China. I clipped a part of the cover – which must have also been textile. There is a note that the book is ‘fabric samples mounted in accordion-style, silk covered, volumes in brown cloth-covered folios’.

3 Free eBooks – November 2017

So many books….so little time!

Evans, Henry Herman. Botanical prints with excerpts from the artist's notebooks. San Francisco: Freeman. 1977. Borrow from Internet Archive here. This is a book available from Internet Archive that is loaned for 14 days. I loved the prints in this book…well work the look. I appreciate that a lot of books that were previous hard to access because they were still under copyright but out-of-print (and expensive if they were available on the used market) are being digitized and made available this way. Kudos to the Internet Archive and the people that are working to make it possible.

Godey, Louis A.; Hale, Sarah Josepha. Godey’s Lady’s Book. Published in Philadelphia. The Internet Archive has many volumes…particularly issues from 1864 available here. The illustrations are snippets of fashion history at the that the Civil War was ending; the magazine managed to stay surprisingly apolitical. What do you think about these bathing dresses from July 1864!

Wight, Robert. Icones plantarum Indiae Orientalis - or figures of Indian plants. Madras: Published by JB Pharoah for the author. 1840-1853. Six volumes (and other books by the same author) available from the Internet Archive here. I like the botanical drawings in these volumes as prompts for Zentangle patterns.

3 Free eBooks – October 2017

I am always thrilled to find a new source of eBooks. This month it was the Smithsonian making 1,000 illustrated Japanese Texts available online. I’ve just started making my way through. Here are three eBooks I’ve enjoyed so far.

Kono, Bairei. Bairei gafu. Yamada Unsodo, Kyoto, Meiji 38 [1905]. Three volumes available from Smithsonian Libraries here. Birds!

Utagawa, Sadahide. Bansho shashin zafu. Sonoharaya Shosuke, Toto, Bunkyu 4 [1864]. Available from Smithsonian Libraries here. Nature and art…a great combo.

Kobayashi, Bunshici. Bansho zukan. Kobayashi Bunshici, Tokyo, Meiji 34 [1901]. Two volumes available from Smithsonian Libraries here. More plants and animals...the bamboo images would make an elegant wallpaper.

3 Free eBooks – September 2017

I picked three series this month – one magazine and two multi-volume books.

The Graphic Arts (The monthly magazine of the craftsmanship of advertising). Boston: The Graphic Arts Co. 1911-1915. Eight volumes are available from Hathi Trust here. A lot of technical advances were being made during this time to meet the demand for increasingly colorful print advertising. The clip I’ve picked was annotated “An achievement in two-color plate making.”

Duncan, James and Dunbar, William. Introduction to entomology. Edinburgh: W.H. Lizars. 1843. Seven volumes available from Internet Archive: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Some of the butterflies looked very familiar (like ones in Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy exhibit). I wondered how many of the insects seen in 1843 are now extinct.

Harris, William T, Edward Everett Hale, Nelson A. Miles, O. P. Austin, George Cary Eggleston (editorial staff). The United States of America: A pictorial history of the American nation from the earliest discoveries and settlements to the present time. New York: Imperial Publishing Company. 1909. Five volumes available from Hathi Trust here. There are more drawings than color illustrations…and the telling is somewhat dated. History is subtly re-interpreted. This was the way history was presented prior to World War I…before we became a ‘superpower.’

3 Free eBooks – August 2017

I’ve been enjoying colorful magazines on various topics that are from 2016 and available on Internet Archive. It’s like browsing through a stack of periodicals in the dentist’s office!

House Beautiful (from US and UK) from 2015 and 2016. Available from Internet Archive here. Lots of food for thought if you are redecorating, renovating, or moving to another house and wanting to add something to make it ‘home.’

World of Animals from 2014 and 2017 available from Internet Archive here. Great pictures of animals – many in action – from all over the world.

Canadian Architecture and Design 2009 available from Internet Archive here. Again – great photography…beautiful places. I hope pocket doors become popular again!