Inspired by the recent popularity of coloring books for grownups, the New York Academy of Medicine is sponsoring Color Our Collections week. Libraries all over the country — including ZSR Special Collections & Archives — are offering free, printable scans of their illustrated materials for your coloring pleasure. ZSR’s coloring pages are available in a #ColorOurCollections... Continue reading “Color Our Collections” ›
If you were a holiday shopper in the 1830s, one item on your list might well have been an annual gift book—an anthology of illustrations, poems, stories, and essays, in an affordable but decorative binding. Several examples of 19th century holiday gift books are now on exhibit in the ZSR Library Special Collections & Archives... Continue reading “A Token of My Affection: 19th Century Christmas Annuals” ›
American artist Rockwell Kent spent Christmas 1918 in a small cabin on an island off the south coast of Alaska. More than twenty years later he recalled the experience in words and woodcut illustrations in a holiday gift book titled A Northern Christmas. The small book was published by the American Artists Group, an organization... Continue reading “A Northern Christmas, by Rockwell Kent (1941)” ›
Ethiopia, the oldest independent nation in Africa, has a unique Christian tradition dating back to the 4th century. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church developed largely in isolation after the Islamic conquest of Egypt in the 640’s. But Christianity remained the official state religion for many centuries, and the Ethiopian imperial family claimed to be descended directly... Continue reading “Ethiopian Psalter, 18th or 19th Century” ›
Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) is now best known as portrait painter of some of the most famous figures of Renaissance Europe, including Erasmus, Thomas More, and King Henry VIII of England. But as a young artist in his native Basel, Holbein also worked as an illustrator, producing drawings that would be reproduced in woodcuts... Continue reading “Images of the Old Testament, by Hans Holbein (1549)” ›
