BiblioOdyssey

Wall Charts – Rudolf Leukart

BiblioOdyssey is full of excellent scans of eclectic book art and samples of illustrations from Obscure manuscripts. As well as the interesting annotations added to many of these images this blog acts as a great launch pad to some sites full of visual wonder.

Fish Fashion contains examples of plates from the snappily titled ‘Fishes, crayfishes, and crabs, of diverse colours and extraordinary form, that are found around the islands of the Moluccas and on the coasts of the southern lands’ published in 1719 by Louis Renard. The book, containing no less than 460 hand coloured engravings took 30 years to compile.

The 19th century science wall charts post leads us to an inspirational repository of biological illustrations by Rudolf Leukart. His Wandtafeln (wall charts), produced from 1877 to 1892, were used worldwide as teaching aids. They depict an exotic array of parasites and other micro-zoological organisms. Considering the ongoing fascination with the creation of simple life-forms from code and the prevalence of decoration in generative art, these illustrations should be of inspiration to artists working in these fields.

Alvin Lustig, book cover designer and textile artist, was one of the first to introduce modern art into graphic design leaving legacy in contemporary practice and long-term influence book cover design, aside from this claim he produce extremely balanced cutting edge designs for books whose contents are more than often equally rewarding.