Burma Life

Tallah Pya-that. Funeral car and spire.

Threshing Paddy.

Yahan Chwa Thee. Rahan's procession.

Yok-thay-pweh. Marionettes.

Mee-eim-byan. Fire balloon.

[detail from] Sun-gyee-loung. A grand distribution of alms.

"The blessedness of alms-giving is a doctrine carefully taught by the Buddhist religion, and the people esteem it a favour to be allowed to offer to their Hpoongyis. After the long Lent (WAH) is over, many of the young novices leave the monasteries and return to the world.

A month later, in the month TA-SOUNG-MON [November] there is a grand religious offering in the early morning as shewn in our picture. The whole body of Monks in the district or quarter pass in file through a covered way, and each receives as much as he and his attendants can carry."

Nwah-leh-pyaing. Bullock cart race.

Pagoda Htee-smith. Htee-lot-thama.

[detail from] Hpon-gyee Kyoung. Monasteries.

Sin-mya. Elephants.

Burmese carpenter.

Cremation. Mee-thin-gyo-thee Hpon-gyee-bya.

Matayah-koung-eim. A Burmese house

Gaudama Buddha.

These watercolour sketches from 1897 were painted by a local Burmese artist. For each of the ~90 illustrations in the album there is an accompanying description by a missionary. 'Watercolour Paintings of Burmese Life' [Ms. Burm. a. 5] is online at the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. {note the thumbnail view button at the top once you click 'Open Item'}. All of the above images were loaded at full size (the details come from unspliced zoomify screencaps) and were very slightly cleaned up - removing pencil additions and some of the most overt page staining.

Kyushu Medical Books

Gozonoshugonarabin (undated)
I *think* some of those objects are meant to be body organs.

Zentaishinron, 1854
comparative anatomy

Orandakinso (undated)
I think those circular figures are the legend for the anatomy points
(pressure or energy or acupuncture) in the body charts. [It took me a
while - I thought they were cross sectioned veins or blood cells at first]

Shinkyokuzusetsu (undated)

Kotsudoseigozusets, 1744

Majimaganryonozu (undated)
All the different flavours of pinkeye.

Meikakyusensanpen (undated)
Umm...

Naikeizusetsu (undated)
I'm sure I've posted that figure on the right previously. You have to wonder
how they came to be so stylized. Ignorant artist? Intentional for teaching
purposes? Or perhaps it was just the result of copying from a narrow range
of source material during the foreign exclusion in the 17th/18th/19th centuries?

Hobakuzushikifugen (undated)

Hosonozu (undated)
I'd be thinking 'alien impregnation' rather than dermatological
condition if I woke to see anything like those faces in the mirror.

Juteikaitaishinsho, 1843
The artist had obviously been perusing European anatomy texts.

Kodomosodaturuoshi, 1840
'How to silence and change your baby at the same time'.
Actually, there was another book with a very similar illustration but it
was more in the way of clearing a choking child's mouth. However, the poses
and the faces here don't really project 'care' so much as rabid infanticide.

Gozobanashi (undated)

Gyuzansenseikeirak (undated)

Anpukuzukai, 1827

Geryohiroku (undated)

[click to enlarge images to full size]


This assembly of illustrations comes from the first half of the 112 rare Japanese medical texts online at Kuyshu University ('List of Titles'). The names above derive from the image URLs and are presumably the titles in english - I don't have an Asian language pack on this machine so I couldn't try to translate any of the notes.

Many of the 56 books are are more like short pamphlets and there are a couple of herbals and 2 or 3 books on devices such as instructions to build a humidifier. As you can see above, a lot of the pages have suffered extensive silverfish or other vermin damage, so it's a good thing they've digitized the collection. I'll look through the other half of the books in the future.

Addit: See Part Two.

Purloined Samplings

Frontpiece of 'Testacei cioé nicchi, chiocciole e conchiglie'
by Jacopo Tosi 1683 - part of the Cospi Collection at the
Science and Art Museums of Palazzo Poggi in Bologna
(in english with quite a bit of history of science
and curiosity cabinet material to savour)

Before and after restoration: Folger Shakespeare Library's
remarkable 'Trevelyon Miscellany'. This is an eccentric hand
drawn manuscript by craftsman Thomas Trevelyon from 1608
"combining vibrant patterns, moralizing rhymes, historical and
scriptural texts, colorful pictures, and more". Further information
and manuscript images: i, ii, iii. (via Textual Studies 1500-1800)

'Che si chiama planispherio' (from Barbaro, Perspective) 1568.
[Daniele Barbaro, translator of Vitruvius and architectural theorist]. This
image comes from the large and intriguing Utopia art database at
Cornell University. Intriguing mostly because I managed to have a
short reconnaissance wander through the LunarInsight browser collection
a couple of nights ago, but it appears to now be password protected.
I should have jagged some more images while I had the opportunity.
I dropped them a line about it, which may be a good or a bad thing.

'Tabula Urinarum' - the urine connoisseur's guidebook. This mid-14th
century vellum page formed part of a physician's beltbook. The page
folded up and could be strapped around the waist so that the doctor had
'factual' information on hand during a housecall. The caption for the
flasks seen at about 5 o'clock reads: "these urines signify death." The
beltbook (a device for which I didn't see many other citations) also contained
a phlebotomy chart - both pages form Rosenbach Manuscript 1004/29,
most easily seen from the UCLA Medieval Images Library. I guess it
makes sense when you think about it that urine was "[t]he most
commonly employed diagnostic tool of the medieval physician".

This engraving (and detail) comes without information
(that I could see) from the Gelderland region Image
Library in Holland. It relates to the town of Aalst.

Wonderful Piranesiesque etchings by Gérard Trignac
[more from Feuilleton] from the Egone site (well worth checking out).

The beautifully decorated 'Heber's Hymns Illustrated' by Reginald Heber,
1878 is very reminiscent of the Owen Jones text ornamentation. The engraving
work above was done by a James D Cooper from drawings by about a dozen
artists. The book is available in various formats from Archive.org.

The book clasp gallery in Estonia has images of clasp
mechanisms from 5 centuries of books (note there are
multiple pages for each century) [via Archivalia].

'Das Salzburger Glockenspiel' by Christoph Lederwasch,
1704 from somewhere among the Department of Special
Collections at the University of Salzburg - I always find
something of interest wandering through their site.

'Itinerario, voyage ofte schipvaert van Jan H. van
Linschoten naer Oost ofte Portugaels, 1596'

Map of Jerusalem (undated)

These 2 images come from De Verdieping van Nederland -
it seems to feature treasures from the National Library and
Archives (curated by Martine Grosselink who also maintains the
Atlas of Mutual Heritage site: Dutch East India Company history)

'Heavenly Enlightenment', 1994

'Field Stop' , 1991

Mezzotint prints © Jan Hísek.

Ge'ez bible - Ethiopia 18th cent.

From 'Books as Aesthetic Objects' - The Arthur & Mata Jaffe
Collection at Florida Atlantic University Libraries.

Amorphophallus Flower and Fruit c.1916–1917 and
Gymea Lily (Doryanthes excelsa) c.1892

Black Kangaroo Paw (Macropidia fuliginosa), Red and Green
or Mangles Kangaroo Paw (Anigozanthos manglesii), Cats Paw
(Anigozanthos humilis) c.1880 and Christmas Bells (Blandfordia),
Flax Lily (Dianella), Haemodorum and Grasses 1879

Ellis Rowan: The Flower Hunter -
an exhibition website at the National Library of Australia.

'Never-ending journey'

An untitled work (c. 1948-1963) by Martín Ramírez

"The American Folk Art Museum’s transporting exhibition of the scroll-like
drawings of the Mexican artist Martín Ramírez (1895-1963) should render
null and void the insider-outsider distinction." - 'Outside In', a Review at
The New York Times (slide show in the left margin) [via GMT+9 (-15)]

Drawings by Claude Renard for Franco Dragone’s show,
'The Costumier of Le Rêve' at La Maison Autrique in Brussels.
[I don't recall the connection but I was actually looking for information about
the creators of 'The Obscure Cities' when I ended up at La Maison Autrique.]

Other things...

• Kerlames has collected links to a number of fellow Colombian illustrators: i, ii, iii.
• The Aesthetics of Decay at Blue Tea.
• An outstanding Pieter Bruegel the Elder prints and drawings gallery (and lots to see in the links list too) from Armchair Aquarium [via Monster Brains].
• Zybooks - Artist books online.
• Wikimedia commons Illuminated Manuscripts.
• John Martz from Drawn! has redesigned his portfolio and personal sites which in no way contributed to the recent downtime at Drawn! (!).