The Public Domain Review

NEW ESSAY — “Splitting Hairs”. As Chinese immigration to 19th-c. California grew, the braided queue became a flashpoint of fascination, control, and exclusion. Sarah Gold McBride on hair, power, and the politics of citizenship. 🔗 publicdomainreview.org/essay/splittin…

In 1850, Punch magazine's Gilbert Abbott à Beckett and John Leech published The Comic History of Rome. @CarolineWazer explores how it's in Leech's anachronistic illustrations where the true subversion lies, offering a critique of Victorian society itself: publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-eter…

Gaillardias (1918), an autochrome photograph by Auckland photographer Robert Walrond. See more autochromes from early 20th-century New Zealand in the collection of the @Te_Papa museum: publicdomainreview.org/essay/autochro…

“In the whirlpool of modern life — The most difficult thing is to live alone”, declares an intertitle during the opening scene of Lonesome (1928), directed by Paul Fejos. Watch the full film here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/pau…

Behold the "Rowing-Bath" from 1916, the “newest contribution to the enjoyment of living” — publicdomainreview.org/collection/the…

"General northward view, North Cape, Norway"; photochrom print published by Detroit Publishing Co., ca.1890-1900. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/lan…

The ten-volume "Unai no tomo" (1891–1923) is comprised of hundreds of woodblock prints of Japanese toys, including jack-in-the-box chickens, whales on wheels, magnetic mice, and popguns, hobbyhorses, and noisemakers galore: publicdomainreview.org/collection/una…

The Sun card from the summer "suit" of the Astronomia playing card deck, published in 1829. Featuring 3 other seasonal suits, the pack was used to play two games — Conjunction and Combination — which were trumps-based, similar to Whist. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/ast…

"Caterpillar, Pear, Tulip, and Purple Snail " (1561–96) — from the remarkable Model Book of Calligraphy, the result of a collaboration across many decades between a master scribe Georg Bocskay and artist Joris Hoefnagel, who died #onthisday in 1601: publicdomainreview.org/collection/the… #OTD

"Japanese Officer looking into Port Arthur" — one of a selection of colorised stereographs depicting Japanese soldiers and camp life during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905. More here: bit.ly/1H1c50d

Johannes Hartlieb's 1462 Kräuterbuch (“Book of Herbs”) features 160 illustrations abreast textual descriptions of the plants’ medicinal uses, such as cabbage for headaches and stinging nettles for toothache: publicdomainreview.org/collection/har…

Photographs of sea stars, collected during the Siboga Expedition around Indonesia, 1899–1900. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/pho…

True to the ideas held within — that blue light is bearer of unique and special properties — The Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight (1877) is printed entirely with blue ink on blue paper: publicdomainreview.org/collection/the…

Mongolian manuscript from the 19th century, full of charts and diagrams that astrologers (generally Buddhist monks) would use to calculate the best time to do certain things, such as depart on a trip or remove a dead body from a dwelling: publicdomainreview.org/essay/a-mongol…

Philipp Otto Runge’s Farbenkugel (1810). The top two images show the surface of the sphere, while the bottom two show horizontal and vertical cross sections. From our selection of colour charts, wheels and tables through the centuries: publicdomainreview.org/collection/col…

Things get a little meta in this page from a mysterious 16th-century watercolour manuscript of geometrical figures and perspective drawings. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/sol…

It's World Brain Day! We've all got one. Here's a fine example featured in Kaishi Hen, a 1772 anatomical atlas from the dawn of experimental medicine in Japan. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/kai…

Long before the 21st-century craze for adult colouring books came this 19th-century “painting book” from Walter Crane: publicdomainreview.org/collection/wal…

“Leaving the Opera in the Year 2000”, a circa 1902 illustration by French illustrator, etcher, lithographer, caricaturist, novelist, and all around futurologist, Albert Robida. More on the print here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/lea… Print from our shop here: publicdomainreview.org/product/leavin…

The Iranian city of Tabriz, as depicted by the 16th-century Ottoman polymath Matrakçı Nasuh, More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/the…

Mid-16th-century print depicting a monkey holding a bound putto fending off two other winged putti, by "Master of the Die" from a series of tapestries made for Leo X. ⠀⁠ ⠀⁠ Featured in our post of highlights from The Met's open access collections — publicdomainreview.org/collection/a-s…