Comments on: Where can I find out of copyright botanical engravings?

Question: Where can I find out of copyright botanical engravings?

caek — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 03:58:15 -0800

Where can I find copyright/royalty-free botanical engravings? I'm looking more images like those on the last page of The Grammar of Ornament. Printed catalogues, modern (copyright/royalty-free) books, or antique books that I can scan are fine (I have access to one of the UK's desposit libraries). Online sources would ideally be at a high-resolution suitable for printing, but if they're lo-res, I'd still love to take a look. Like I say, I'm particularly interested in botanical images, but sources of anything decorative and ca. 19th century are very welcome. Sadly, I can't use advertising, text or images of people.

By: gleuschk

gleuschk — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 04:27:31 -0800

Hortus Eystettensis, aka the most beautiful book in the world.

By: einekleine

einekleine — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 04:43:54 -0800

Bibliodyssey would be your goat, but it's not loading for me right now. Here's the cache from Sunday to give you an idea. There's some botanical images down the right hand side.

By: Brittanie

Brittanie — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 04:53:07 -0800

You can get a lot of images from Briar Press (b&w woodcuts, but lots of cool stuff) and also this blogger got his cool images from Grey's Anatomy (the book, not the TV show) which is in the public domain, so you might search Project Gutenberg.

By: dragonsi55

dragonsi55 — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 06:08:21 -0800

Dover Publications

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 06:33:40 -0800

The Missouri Botanical Garden has scanned a lot of their rare books and has them online in a pretty easy to access format including a tag cloud. The scans are NOT copyright free but the images in the books generally are, so it depends what you're looking to do. They have their books viewable via Botanicus and also all tagged and linked in del.icio.us/illustratedgarden

By: adamrice

adamrice — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 07:02:13 -0800

You might enjoy Ernst Haeckel's "Art Forms in Nature"

By: vetiver

vetiver — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:27:52 -0800

Dover Publications has the color plates from Grammar of Ornament -- print only, although if you search the site, there are tons of similar collections with CDs as well.

Online only -- try Clipart.com. Lots of cheesy MSWord-type clipart but if you restrict your search to B&W illustrations, you'll find some good stuff. (Mostly from Dover, actually.)

It's a bit of a pain to search but you can try the collage images pool on Flickr. "May Offend" is a similar Flickr group. (You have to join to access images but it's free.)

By: taber

taber — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 17:22:12 -0800

I would scour History of Medicine sources, engravings like this will be found under the heading of materia medica often, or will be labeled as "herbals."

A few things to try: Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal, 1737-1739, from the British Library; Index of Medieval Medical Images from UCLA, try just typing in "herbs" and you get a few hundred hits (for starters); and Herbarius Latinus, ca. 1486 from Yale.

By: caek

caek — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 13:10:42 -0800

Thanks very much everyone. That's exactly what I was after, and plenty to be getting on with!

(One note, for my reference as much as anyone elses: apparently the best way to search BibliOdyssey is via it's del.icio.us account.)