Although we appreciate illuminated manuscripts and history books about open culture, we adhere to a more restrained aesthetic style in our own texts. But that doesn’t negate the temptation to start this paragraph with one of those oversized first letters that have gotten bigger and more complex over the centuries. Online archive of the Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp We offer a wide variety of woodblock prints including designs. plain and barely legibleIn addition to W incorporating sprouted plants, some kind of sainteven The scene of what appears to be an impending murder.
If you are not interested in fancy characters, you can also see below. Plantin Moretus Woodcut Archive Through the categories of plant, animaland science. Some of these illustrations are technical, while others are more fanciful. In some cases, perhaps for centuries, it may not be as real as it once was.
do not have All over 14,000 woodblock prints Works currently in the archive would seem to fit neatly into one of these categories, but if you look at specific entries, you’ll see that the museum labels them with more specific tags .classical antiquity,””Map/Landscape,” or “aureole” (bright medieval-like halo indicating the figure is sacred).
In any case, all these woodblock prints are made You can download it for free (Simply click on the cloud icon in the top right corner of the window that opens after clicking on the image itself.) Feel free to use it as you like. Back in the 16th century, Christophe Plantin and Jan Moretus, for whom the Plantin-Moretus Museum takes its name, were well placed to collect such things. Plantin Moretus Museum website He describes them as a “revolutionary duo.”
They were the Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg of their time, the first printers on an industrial scale. ” And if these decontextualized artifacts of the printing revolution feel a little strange to us today, just imagine what our surviving internet memes will look like four centuries from now. please. input Click here for the woodblock print collection.
via metafilter
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Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages and cultures. His projects include the Substack newsletter books about cities and a book Stateless City: A Stroll Through Los Angeles in the 21st Century. Follow him on Twitter @Colinbemust.
