This lovely cover is from “Holmes Poems”, published in 1883 by
Houghton Mifflin. I found it cheap at a used bookstore in Auburn a few months ago, which justified purchasing it instead of a $250 fully illustrated collection of Byron’s poems. Sigh.

Besides being a poet of some note, Mr. Holmes was also a physician, a professor, coined the term “anaesthesia”, attempted to admit the first African-American and women students to Harvard Medical School while he was dean, and was the bearer of some very fine muttonchops.

This article was later reproduced in 1935 in a collection by the same name of insect stories and illustrations.

As much as I love scientific illustrations, they’re even better when they could stand alone as beautiful works of art!

This is a plate I picked up this past weekend at a Vintage Paper show here in San Francisco. It’s an odd piece, according to the label it’s some kind of plan or schematic for decorations on a piece of furniture. I love the birds and the mice, but it’s the little Xs marked on the drawing that really make it for me. You’ll sometimes see that used to denote areas of a print that are to be filled in with black, but I don’t know if they serve the same purpose here. Anyone know?

Details:

This print is from a loosebound collection called “Documents d’Atelier Art Décoratif Moderne”, published in 1898. The only clue as to who the artist might be is the ‘Th. Lambert’. Which may not even be a name!

I’m going to try to make a weekly feature of posting scans of some of the vintage peices I’ve collected. Just need to come up with a snappy name for it…