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  Sacred Egyptian Bean — one of the many exquisite illustrative plates to be found in Robert John Thornton's "The Temple of Flora" (1807). Read more in our Martin Kemp essay here: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/sex-and-science-in-robert-thornton-s-temple-of-flora And see our Temple of Flora prints for sale here: https://publicdomainreview.org/shop/fine-art-prints/artist/robert-john-thornton

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  Happy #WorldLionDay! Pictured is an image by 16th-century Swiss scholar Konrad Gesner, featured in Edward Topsell’s wonderful History of Four-footed Beasts (1607). More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/topsells-history-of-four-footed-beasts-and-serpents-1658/

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  Today is #InternationalOwlAwarenessDay. Here's "Two Owls", a 1921 print by Dutch artist Julie de Graag. Buy as a print here: https://publicdomainreview.org/product/two-owls And more on the good work of owl conservation here: https://www.owls.org/

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  This is a photograph taken in 1873. Did its creator James Nasmyth somehow, and very secretly, beat the Apollo space program by almost 100 years? You may be surprised to hear he did not. It's a photograph of one of his many intricate models. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/photographs-of-models-of-the-moon-1874

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  Navaho Legends (1897), a book from the American Folk-Lore Society compiling Navaho myths and legends and including a lengthy introduction on the history, beliefs and customs of the Navaho people: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/navaho-legends-1897

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  Print from 1556 published by Hieronymus Cock , designed by Cornelis Floris II and engraved by Johannes or Lucas van Doetecum. More of these highly elaborate ornament prints, mostly in the grotesque style, from the collection of the Rijksmuseum here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/16th-century-ornament-prints

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  The Light is Sweet, a 1687 engraving by the Dutch poet, illustrator, and engraver Jan Luyken. One of 900+ prints available to buy from our online shop: https://publicdomainreview.org/product/the-light-is-sweet/

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  The American Librarian C.A. Cutter looks forward from 1883 to “the library of the future” in 1983, where the librarians wear slippers and a “little car” delivers books to your desk. Dreams might still come true... https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-library-of-the-future-a-vision-of-1983-from-1883

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  Dice Man — it's just how he rolls... More radical fashion from the 16th-century Schembart Carnival here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/radical-fashion-from-the-schembart-carnival-1590

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  NEW ESSAY — Centuries before Neo instantly mastered Kung Fu in The Matrix, medieval scholars found a shortcut to years of difficult study: a magical manuscript that promised to fast-track advanced learning. Anne Lawrence-Mathers explores the Ars notoria: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/ars-notoria/

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  Illustration from The Living Forest (1925), by the Canadian painter Arthur Heming who — having been diagnosed with colourblindness as a child — worked for most of his life in a distinctive palette of black, yellow, and white: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/tribal-life-in-old-lyme-canadas-colorblind-chronicler-and-his-connecticut-exile/

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  From Maya astrological tables and Mixtec genealogies, to agricultural records and religious rites, the nine-volume Antiquities of Mexico (1831-48) exquisitely reproduced virtually all pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican books in European collections at the time: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/antiquities-of-mexico/

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  Images from a 1608 edition of Livre de Pourtraiture by Jehan Cousin the Younger (ca. 1522–95), son of the painter and sculptor Jehan Cousin the Elder (ca. 1490-ca. 1560): https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/jehan-cousin-s-livre-de-pourtraiture-1608/

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  Covers from Amauta, a Peruvian avant-garde literary magazine (1926–30): https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/amauta-covers/

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  Photograph of a Sinhalese woman by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1875. More on the Victorian photographer's time in Sri Lanka in our essay by Eugenia Herbert: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/julia-margaret-cameron-in-ceylon-idylls-of-freshwater-vs-idylls-of-rathoongodde

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  Final illustration for A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future (1894) by the wealthy businessman John Jacob Astor IV, in which he offers an imagining of life in the year 2000. In 1912, Astor would die in the sinking of the Titanic. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/a-journey-in-other-worlds-a-romance-of-the-future-1894

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  "Kazanian Cat, Astrakhanian mind, Siberian reason, lived gloriously, ate sweetly, farted lightly"⠀ ⠀ More on this image and more Russian lubki (colorful broadsides, 16th–early 20th century) here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/d-a-rovinskiis-collection-of-russian-lubki-18th%E2%80%9319th-century/#Caturday (Print to buy here: https://publicdomainreview.org/shop/search/?q=Lubok)

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  Barnard’s Universal Criminal Cipher Code (1895) was a book of codes to help disguise internal police telegrams in what amounted to some kind of 19th-century version of the encrypted email: http://buff.ly/2ut1vvs

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  #SundayReads — Vlad Solomon on populist forerunner Henri Rochefort, the self-described “errant journalist and literary poacher” who rose to power on the wings of sarcasm and ridicule to reshape France’s political landscape: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/henri-rochefort-and-the-origins-of-french-populism/

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  An Austrian painter's beautiful presentation, from 1878, of various atmospheric conditions: including will-o'-the-wisp, a moonbow, and the Northern Lights: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/phenomena-over-and-under-the-earth-1878?utm_content=bufferf2207&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer 🌪 🌈 ☀️ 🌤 ⛅️ 🌥 ☁️ 🌦 🌧 ⛈ 🌩 ❄️ ☃️ 🌬 💨 💧

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  "Diagram of the Winds", one of several medieval cosmographic diagrams found in a 12th-century English manuscript. See more of its wonderful cosmographic imagery here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/cosmography-manuscript-12th-century

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  "Caterpillar, Pear, Tulip, and Purple Snail " (1561–96) — from the remarkable Model Book of Calligraphy, the result of a collaboration across many decades between a master scribe Georg Bocskay and artist Joris Hoefnagel, who died #onthisday in 1601: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-model-book-of-calligraphy-1561-1596 #OTD

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  An "alphabet album", a beautiful book of calligraphy and typographic engraving from 1843 assembled by Joseph-Balthazar Silvestre. Ranging from the old-fashioned to the surprisingly modern looking, from the elegantly unreadable to the crystal clear... https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/sylvestre-alphabet-album

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  Coloured lantern slides from Norway in the early 20th century: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/lantern-slides-of-norway-ca-1910?utm_content=buffer4d150&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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  In her essay “Picturing Scent: The Tale of a Beached Whale”, @Lizzie_Marx follows a “whale-trail” across history to discover the olfactory paradoxes of the Dutch Golden Age: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/picturing-scent

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  The remarkable visual diary of the US Civil War left to us by Adolph Metzner: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-civil-war-sketches-of-adolph-metzner-1861-64?utm_content=buffer4b307&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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  “Who frets about the mystery / Enshrouding all of history / On reading this will, maybe, see / We've made it plain as ABC.” From Alexander The Great, “a victim of fate”, to Zenobia, “the empress of Palmyra” — An Alphabet of History (1905) https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/an-alphabet-of-history-1905?utm_content=bufferd77f6&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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  Carla Nappi conjures a dreamscape from four archival fragments — four oblique references to women named “Elizabeth” who lived on the watershed of the 16th and 17th centuries: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-elizabeths-elemental-historians

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  Illustration from Gaspar Schott's Magia universalis naturae et artis (c. 1658) — the bottom image shows a "cat piano". More about cat pianos here: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/cat-pianos-sound-houses-and-other-imaginary-musical-instruments

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  Page from Thesaurus of Alchemy, ca. 1725. More wondrous illustrations from the world of alchemy here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-surreal-art-of-alchemical-diagrams