Music for dancing the tarantula’s deadly venom out of yr system.
Michael Bernhard Valentini’s Museum Museorum (Frankfurt, 1714), via the Internet Archive.
Unicorn Versus Narwhal
Michael Bernhard Valentini’s Museum Museorum (Frankfurt, 1714), via the Internet Archive.
Procession of Monstrous Figures at the Met. Wendel Dietterlin the Younger (c. 1614-69)
Candidate for top useless Google book: Joseph Furttenbach’s Meschanische Reissladen (Augsburg, 1644) about the use, storage, and care of drafting instruments, all of the illustrations of which are on folding plates that remain folded. Below you can just look at what you’re missing! (Yes there are some books you read primarily for the pictures.)
Design idea for storing your curiosities.
Paul Contant’s Cabinet, from Les oeuvres de Jacques et Paul Contant père et fils…, (Poitiers, Julian Thoreau & la vefve d’Antoine Mesnier, 1628)
Ostrich!
Conrad Gesner’s Historiae animalium Liber 3. qui est de auium natura. Zurich, Cristoph. Froschouerum, 1555.
Christoph Semler’s Star Atlas, Coelum Stellatum in Quo Asterismi (1731).
At the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering, and Technology.
FIRE-BRANDED Books. Pictured here, marks of the Augustinian and Dominican orders.
From the amazing Catálogo Colectiva de Marcas de Fuego.
“Practicing fire brand stands during the colonial period in Mexico, primarily. Evidence indicates that its use began in the second half of the sixteenth century and lasted until the first decades of the nineteenth century. This practice was welcomed in monastic libraries and religious institutions dependent on the clergy. Isolation is no record of some private libraries that hold their own brand.”
The Triumph of Fortune (Venice, 1526), Sigismondo Fanti’s fortune-telling choose-your-own adventure:
“The book begins with seventy-two questions, some of a general philosophical or political nature and others more relevant to daily life. Choosing a question, the reader is directed to one of the twelve nude women who symbolize Fortune, each one catching a different wind in her drapery, sails, or hair as she glides over uncertain seas. From there the reader is directed to these stylized representations of Renaissance palaces, bearing the names of twelve of Italy’s foremost noble families, and to one of the letters that appears beneath them. The letter indicated instructs the reader to turn to one of the wheels of fortune depicted in subsequent pages.”
Son of the Martini
Edward Gorey illustrated this hilarious and sarcastic cookbook, Son of the Martini from 1967 written by Jane Trahey and Daren Pierce. The recipes which are printed according to level of difficulty: “After three martinis”, “After four martinis”, etc.
Not ashamed to admit that work ceased for 15 minutes when we found this one.
And there was much amusement.
(via archivalia)
Pocket Utopia.
32mo. Thomas More, Utopia, Cologne, apud Cornelius ab Egmond & socios, 1629.
Savonarola title page with Josse Bade’s woodcut printing press device.
Girolamo Savonarola. Expositio in psalmos Miserere mei deus…(with) Expositio orationis…Paris, Badius Ascensius/Josse Bade, 1510-20, 1517.
