Enjoy some random links from October. Slow down. Breathe in. Feel your productivity die.
Fragmentarium – a database of illuminated manuscript fragments for the fragment-hounds among us!
Bonus marks challenge: use AI to put together fragments that look like they belong together back into a single manuscript. (Remember, people cut up and sell books piecemeal. There’s even one such wonderful gentleman running a store on my street.)
The helmet of my dreams:
https://paolopuck.com/
I like Paolo Puck’s alternative universe of ephemera and artefacts. I especially like this poster of ice cream treats. I’d eat a “French Kiss”:
Museum of novelty coin-operated machines. Has a lot of machines that touch, spray and dribble on you. For money!
BYTE Magazine
There is a new cool visual archive of all BYTE magazine issues from the UK. Here are a couple of neat ads from the magazine:
Terrible clip-art style
Here are some examples of a particular visual style that I hate, from the magazine. It’s like early 2000s clipart.
I don’t know what it’s called, and I couldn’t find it at the wonderful Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute (CARI). Maybe I’ll submit it as a new style?
Tiny cameras, tiny pictures
I went to a miniature-makers show and sale. There, I purchased a tiny photo – made by a tiny camera. Huh… I guess those were a thing:
Here is more information about the tiny round Petal camera. It came with a round “film punch” and you’d punch out round holes out of your normal film – all in a pitch-black room.
Airbrushed T-Shirts: Shirt Kings
Do you remember airbrushed custom T-Shirts? Read the story of Shirt Kings out in Queens. There’s also a nice podcast interview with Phade.
More pictures on Phade’s website.
Iron-On T-Shirts: Roach Studios
Do you remember Iron-On T-Shirts at the mall? This grandpa remembers!
Roach Studios looks like a big player, but quite a lot of their shirts were tasteless
Here’s a short history of Roach Studios.
More – https://2warpstoneptune.com/category/iron-on-transfers/roach-studios/
From the 1974 Roach Catalog
Not quite sure how to process this synopsis of an animated film called “American Pop”
I’m liking this picture – probably because I’m really enjoying Naomi Novik’s Scholomance books right now. I remembered looking into the painter, John William Waterhouse, years ago. He drew pretty striking Pre-Raphaelite women, and I figured his wife was his model. Dear Reader – his wife looked nothing like the women he constantly drew. Yikes for both of them.
Fun fact: this Waterhouse model ended up becoming a Ukrainian musician, making Rennaisance Dubstep bangers that are just… perfection.
Elliott Dold’s Night : scans cleaned up by John Coulthart. John says that the poetry itself falls far short of the illustrations – he’s right.
S. H. Sime – Sidney Sime
A short biography of S. H. Sime by Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr
He mostly illustrated for the writer Lord Dunsany.
Jim’s site was a wonderful resource for illustrator biographies, and you can still read them at the Web Archive.
Here are the illustrator biographies on the site:
E.A. Abbey
Harvey Dunn
Heinrich Kley
W. Heath Robinson
Charles Addams
Walter H. Everett
Roy Krenkel
Harry Rountree
Harry Anderson
Nicolai Fechin
Bernard Krigstein
Mead Schaeffer
Boris Artzybasheff
Virgil Finlay
Harvey Kurtzman
John Schoenherr
John Austen
Jas. Montgomery Flagg
Dorothy Lathrop
Frank Schoonover
Carl Barks
W. Russell Flint
Robert Lawson
Ronald Searle
George Barr
Hal Foster
Alan Lee
Jose Segrelles
John Bauer
Frank Frazetta
J.C./F.X. Leyendecker
Sidney Sime
Ivan Bilibin
Frank Kelly Freas
Norman Lindsay
Jessie Willcox Smith
Mahlon Blaine
Warwick Goble
Andrew Loomis
J. Allen St. John
Franklin Booth
Frank Godwin
Orson Lowell
E.J. Sullivan
Frank Brangwyn
Walter Dean Goldbeck
Winsor McCay
Gustaf Tenggren
Zdenek Burian
Gordon Grant
Moebius
Alex Toth
George Carlson
Elizabeth Shippen Green
Alphonse Mucha
Alberto Vargas
André Castaigne
Milt Gross
Kay Nielsen
Various I
H.C. Christy
John Held, Jr.
Mel Odom
Various II
Walter Appleton Clark
Al Hirschfeld
Eric Pape
John Vassos
Harry Clarke
Burne Hogarth
Frank Papé
Daniel Vierge
Joseph Clement Coll
Brad Holland
Maxfield Parrish
Harold Von Schmidt
Dean Cornwell
(Robert E. Howard)
Virgil Partch
Lynd Ward
Frank Craig
Albert Hurter
George Petty
Basil Wolverton
Will Crawford
Jeffrey Jones
C. Coles Phillips
Lawson Wood
Percy Crosby
Michael Wm. Kaluta
Willy Pogany I
Wally Wood
E.J. Detmold
Arthur I. Keller
Willy Pogany II
Sulamith Wülfing
Leo & Diane Dillon
Walt Kelly
Howard Pyle
N.C. Wyeth
Katherine Sturges Dodge
Everett Raymond Kinstler
Arthur Rackham
Edmund Dulac
Jack Kirby
Charles Robinson