Could the flower motifs on your teacups really be 200 years old? Absolutely. Today, you can adorn your walls with this floral splendor, sleep in bedding featuring these blooms, or leaf through one of the many magnificent coffee-table books dedicated…
When Leonhart Fuchs was appointed Professor of Medicine at the University of Tübingen (founded in 1477 and one of Germany’s oldest and most prestigious institutions) in 1535, the university was in a state of radical upheaval. Duke Ulrich had just…
What did a 17th-century bookbinder’s workshop actually look like? What went on at the wigmaker’s, or inside a mysterious alchemist’s kitchen? And how did a compass smith master his craft? For us, these illustrated volumes – providing detailed glimpses into…
The Arrival of the Exotic At the end of the 16th century, a botanical sensation from the Ottoman Empire reached the Netherlands: the tulip. In the gardens of scholars and the nobility, it quickly became the ultimate status symbol. Since…
In the world of 18th-century scientific illustration, women were often relegated to the background, primarily working as colorists. Maddalena Bouchard (c. 1772 – c. 1793; her exact dates remain unknown), however, shattered these boundaries. She was one of the very…
At the beginning of the 20th century, a unique artistic fusion emerged in Japan. As Western garden flowers – such as tulips, pansies, and roses – became increasingly popular in Japanese society, the master of woodblock printing, Tanigami Konan 谷上廣南…
For many centuries, books were made to order: at the request of a prince or high-ranking clergyman, a monk sat daily in the “scriptorium” with a template beside him and a sheet of parchment before him, writing text with a…
The cruel – yet technically and artistically masterful – copperplate engravings in Theodor de Bry’s (1528–1598) edition of Bartolomé de Las Casas’ A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies became icons of Spanish atrocities in the New World.…
The work Abbildung Der Gemein-Nützlichen Haupt-Stände (often simply referred to as Weigel’s Register of Estates) is one of the most significant artistic and cultural-historical documents of the Baroque era. It was published in Regensburg in 1698 by the engraver and…
Ernst Haeckel’s masterpiece, Art Forms in Nature (Kunstformen der Natur), remains a milestone in the art of illustration to this day. Haeckel focuses on what many overlook: the tiny creatures of the seas. His depictions of jellyfish (medusae), calcareous sponges,…