Books in the Dover Pictorial Archive series

Over 150 motifs reflecting the intricacies of Celtic design, ideal for use in graphics layouts, needlework designs, and art projects. Includes animal, floral, and abstract motifs clearly drawn for sharp reproduction.

Some of the most ingenious and attractive modern motifs. 746 designs.

A painter whose father was an engraver and publisher of the same name, Matthäus Merian (1621-1687) published this remarkable group of unusual and highly imaginative animal illustrations. This copyright-free collection includes a large and fascinating selection of engravings that illustrate scientific specimens and legendary creatures―all meticulously reproduced from an extremely rare eighteenth-century edition.Carefully arranged into six major divisions (quadrupeds, snakes, mollusks and crustaceans, fish, birds, and insects), approximately 1,300 copyright-free images include realistic and fanciful portrayals of a varied array of real animals, in addition to such imaginary creatures as unicorns, dragons, basilisks, harpies, griffins, and other mythical beasts. Identifying captions in Latin accompany many of the illustrations. Commercial artists, illustrators, and craftspeople will find a host of uses for these lovingly detailed engravings: as book and magazine illustrations and as attention-getting graphics ideal for enhancing flyers, brochures, newsletters, and any number of other print projects. Art lovers and antiquarians―anyone with an interest in the art and ideas of an earlier era―will enjoy browsing through these wonderful antique images. Dover (1998) republication of 123 plates from the work published by R. & G. Wetstenios, Amsterdam, 1718.

Here is a rich selection of floral and foliate motifs, reprinted from a rare German collection of the late nineteenth century. Included are 124 royalty-free stylized designs that will add a note of decorative panache and natural beauty to almost any graphic project.Buds, blossoms, stalks, and foliage are depicted in a simple and attractive style reminiscent of the woven fabric patterns of the early northern Renaissance. Ideal for many practical uses--stenciling, leatherwork and metalwork, fabric painting, textile design, and more--the motifs are also valuable simply for design inspiration. At just pennies apiece, they constitute a low-cost resource that artists and crafters will want at their fingertips.Dover (1991) republication of 124 illustrations from Blatter und Blümen für Fläche-Decoration: Eine Vorlagensammlung für Zichen-, Webe-, und gewerbliche Fortbindunsschulen, Fabrikanten und Musterzeichner, published by E. Twietmeyer, Leipzig, 1885.

The splendid engravings in this historic book combine beautiful images of roses, butterflies, tulips, caterpillars, and other specimens of plant and insect life in elegant full-page compositions. Representing a notable achievement from a great age of floral painting and the engraver's art, they reach across the centuries to us with undiminished freshness and appeal, revealing the most delicate nuances of natural forms with a scientist's eye for precise detail.These fine works represent not only a high point in the history of botanical and zoological art but also an important advance in scientific knowledge as well. The artist, Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), was one of the first observers to comprehend and record the metamorphoses of insects, most notably the emergence of the butterfly from its caterpillar and chrysalis phases. Her Erucarum Ortus, whose engravings were originally published in the years 1679-1717, was a substantial contribution to the science of entomology and helped lay the foundations for Charles Linnaeus's later work in the classification of plant and animal species.This edition combines all 154 original engravings from her three-volume work on the insects of Europe. Students and lovers of the natural sciences as well as those of the arts and crafts will find these dazzling works a rich source of information and delight. Graphic artists, textile designers, and others will find it a versatile and royalty-free design resource that will earn a treasured place on their library shelves.Dover (1991) republication of 154 engravings from Erucarum Ortus, Alimentum et Paradoxa Metamorphosis, 1718.

Since the discovery of African art by the Cubists, the primitive strength of its motifs has held a fascination for contemporary artists and designers and has exercised a considerable infl uence on the development of modern art. This book brings together an unusually varied selection of African designs which will find many uses in advertising and in the creation of book designs, bookplates, labels, and patterns for textiles and wallpaper; or may simply serve as inspiration for the creation of original designs. Rendered in stark black-and-white, they may be reproduced, enlarged, reduced or altered at will.Symbolic and simple geometric motifs, repetitive designs and textural patterns, representations of human beings, animals and mythical figures, masks, abstract motifs, and artifacts and objects with figural components are reproduced from the work of the Ndebele, Ashanti, Zulu, Masai, Bushongo, Mangbetu, Bariba, Toma, Baule and many other tribes. There are designs from carved ivory pendants and bracelets, helmet masks, wooden combs, altar slabs and shields, and designs printed on cloth and painted on doors and walls. Each is identified by original use, and the source is listed for each.Geoffrey Williams, himself a practicing designer, has reproduced most of these designs by means of linocut prints in order to capture the power of the originals. His sources have been artifacts in museums and private collections with a few designs gathered from the pages of important publications on the subject. A bibliography refers the reader not only to the sources of material used for this book, but to other major sources of information about African tribal art.

Based on J. G. Heck's Bilder Atlas zum Convenations Lexicon, published in German in the nineteenth century, the Iconographic Encyclopaedia of Science, Literature, and Art was a monumental six-volume compilation of illustrations and information, covering an enormous range of subjects, from architecture to zoology. Among its most remarkable features were the thousands of superb steel engravings, comprising one of the most extensive pictorial archives ever published in a single work.The present book, one of three separate and independent volumes based on the rare original American edition of 1851, is devoted to nature and science. Over 170 beautifully reproduced plates contain thousands of illustrations depicting an extraordinary array of subjects: mathematical and geometrical problems; surveying instruments, astronomical maps, and instruments; planetary systems according to Ptolemy, the Egyptians, Copernicus, and others; positions of the planets; botanical illutrations of scores of plants--including seed pods, fruits, and other parts; physical and meteorological illustration demonstrating many laws and principles; numerous types of physical and chemical apparatus; animals, minerals, fossils, geological formations; human anatomy; and many other images. A descriptive table of contents is keyed to numbered illustrations on each plate.Artists, illustrators, and anyone in need of precisely rendered, royalty-free science or nature illustrations will welcome this practically inexhaustible wealth of immediately usable art.Dover (1994) republication of 176 plates from Iconographic Encyclopaedia of Science, Literature, and Art, published by Rudolph Garrigue, New York, 1851.

"Throughout history, artists have grappled with the problem of depicting clearly and forcefully the principles of evil and suffering in human existence." With this view, the Lehners have collected 244 representations, symbols, and manuscript pages of devils and death from Egyptian times to 1931. Reproductions from Dürer, Holbein, Cranach, Rembrandt, and many other lesser-known or unknown artists illustrate the fascinating history. The fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries are stressed.The book is divided into 12 chapters, each with a separate introduction. Most of the illustrations are collected in five of these chapters: Devils and Demons, including Belial, Beelzebub, and the Anti-Christ; Witches and Warlocks, their animals, forms, and rituals; The Danse Macabre, with the Dance of Death Alphabet by Holbein and representations of all classes leveled by the common force of death; Memento Mori, including a skull clock, a macabre representation of the Tree of Knowledge and Death, and the winged hourglass and scythe; and Religio-Political Devilry, the fight between the Papists and the Reformers, and symbols of devils in other political disputes. There are also chapters on the Fall of Lucifer, Faust and Mephistopheles, Hell and Damnation, The Apocalyptic Horsemen, Witch-Hunting, The Art of Dying, and Resurrection and Reckoning.Anyone curious about witchcraft, death, and devils will be interested in this book. It is particularly useful to teachers, artists, and illustrators who need clear reproductions for the classroom, for models, or for commercial uses. Death, devils, and their history are very much with us today.

Baroque art and architecture--extravagant in concept, exuberant in spirit, elaborate in detail--flourished in seventeenth-century Europe, and through the ages has continued to stir us with its vitality and dynamism and its mood of barely suppressed passion. In the architecture of St. Peter's in Rome, St. Paul's in London, and Santa Maria della Salute in Venice as well as in the works of Michelangelo, Bernini, and Rubens, the Baroque spirit lives today. Now graphic artists can add Baroque flair to almost any graphic project with this magnificent collection of royalty-free motifs.The seventeenth-century French artist Jacques Stella (1596-1657) embodies the Baroque sensibility. Early in his career, Stella spent seven years in Florence, working for Medici Prince Cosimo II and enjoying the acquaintance and advice of the master engraver Jacques Callot. He spent another ten years in Rome, where he came under the artistic influence of his friend Nicolas Poussin. On his return to France, championed by Cardinal Richelieu, he became court painter to Louis XIII, and founded a career that makes him esteemed as one of the major French artists of the seventeenth century. This book presents engravings executed by Stella's niece after drawings of Classical motifs probably made by Stella during his years in Italy. These engravings, first published in Paris in 1658, comprise a magnificent sourcebook of ready-to-use Baroque design, filled with highly embellished individual ornaments, decorative motifs, and a dazzling array of border elements.Included are lush florals and foliates, fruits, leaves, birds, shells, acorns, and more--as individual ornaments and rosettes, as repeating motifs in a frieze, and in other useful arrangements. Now this sturdy, inexpensive edition makes them available to a wide audience for convenient reproduction as well as for study, inspiration, and enjoyment.Dover (1987) selection of plates from Divers Ornements d'Architectures, Recueillis et Dessegnes Apres l'Antique par Mr. Stella, Peintre Ordinaire du Roy et Chevalier de Son Ordre de St. Michel, originally published in Paris, 1658.

Forty of Victorian master's most famous designs for wallpapers, chintzes, velveteens, tapestries, tiles, carpets, and more. Reproduced from original color plates of "The Art of William Morris."

412 rare royalty-free woodcut engravings of men in every conceivable attitude, costume, activity. Men at work, play, leisure. Eskimos, gladiators, knights, bullfighters, workers, doctors, artists, many more, taken from 19th-century periodicals.

Drawing on centuries of history, this work is an encyclopedic collection--undoubtedly the largest royalty-free collection of its kind--of devils, dragons, mythical creatures, fanciful beasts, animal-gods, totemic figures, and other supernatural beasts from the darker regions of man's imagination. Spanning many cultures and eras, the collection ranges from prehistoric rock paintings to the drawings of Max Ernst, from the masks of black Africa to the gargoyles of Notre Dame.This volume incudes over 1,000 renderings of designs from ancient Egypt, Greece, and the Middle East: winged lions, harpies, griffins, satyrs, dragons, and more. Medieval centuries are represented by a wealth of monsters, demons, centaurs, and other creatures from The Book of Kells, anonymous Viking artists, and the works of Hieronymus Bosch, Dürer, and others. Global in scope, this vast trove also includes hundreds of non-European imagery: papier-mache masks from Latin America, Oriental deities and demons, feathered serpents from pre-Columbian Aztec and Mayan sources, Navajo sand paintings, and more.

This book presents more than 2,000 illustrations of shoes, hats, and fashion accessories reproduced directly from now rare periodicals and catalogs from the 1850s to 1940. It comprises an invaluable pictorial survey for the fashion historian, designer, and enthusiast, as well as a practical source of illustrations for permission-free use by artists and craftspeople.The sources of these illustrations include major American, British, and European fashion periodicals of the time: Godey's Lady Book, Peterson's Magazine, Harper's Bazar, La Mode Illustrée, L'Art et la Mode, Der Bazar, The Delineator, and others, as well as such general interest periodicals as Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Harper's Weekly, The Youth's Companion, and Life. Many illustrations come from trade catalogs of such merchants as Montgomery Ward, Sears, Roebuck & Co., Jordan Marsh & Co., N. B. Holden Artistic Footwear, and a score of others.Arranged chronologically, the plates present an overview of 90 years of fashion evolution of footwear, millinery, and such accessories as gloves, scarves, purses, handkerchiefs, and more.