Away, Cold Weather

Damn, it's not listening to me. We have the furnace fixed, and find that it costs about a dollar to raise the house temperature for a day. That's what we need to know.


Wrap up in blankets, and dream about the long-ago days of summer.



"A Water Party on the Thames," by A. W. Cooper, engraved by H. Harrall and printed in THE GRAPHIC for June 24, 1874. From the listings of eBay seller historicpaper2



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New Bridge, Broomielaw Quay, Glasgow SCOTLAND

About 1840, drawn by W. H. Bartlett, engraved by R. Wallis, and offered on eBay by seller antiqueportrait, who says he's located in Dorset in the UK. Another of the prints in category Art > Prints > Antique (Pre-1900) > Topographical.

Update 8 November: eBay seems to be rearranging their prints sections. More when it settles down.

We Discover the Old Dominion -- 1916

Book by Louise Closser Hale, illustrated by her husband Walter Hale. Twenty-eight pencil drawings and a map of their route. Published by Dodd, Mead in 1916. Fun to read, but surprises you every few pages with racist comments of the kind that were very common in 1916 but now quite unacceptable. Click one of the images below to see a larger version, as usual.

San Jose, California, 1902

Drying prunes in the sun. San Jose, silicon valley; once upon a time called Blossom Valley, and at one time the primary source of prunes for the world. San Jose is my home.

There's an accent on the e in San José, because without it, in Spanish the emphasis would be on the Jo instead of the sé. In American English we pronounce it Hoe-zay' as our attempt to honor the original name of the town. But only the local government offices bother with the accent.

The photograph originally appeared as part of an article entitled "The Olive and the Prune" in the January 1902 issue of FOUR-TRACK NEWS, a publicity magazine for the New York Central Railroad which a few years later morphed into TRAVEL MAGAZINE.

Dinant Upon the Meuse -1860

From the book Europe Illustrated - Its Picturesque Scenes and Places, published about 1860, comes this engraving of the town of Dinant Upon the Meuse in Belgium, drawn by Thomas Allom and engraved by M. J. Starling. It's typical of the kinds of things you can find on eBay if you poke around the image and art sections.

In this case eBay has it listed in the category Art > Prints > Antique (Pre-1900) > Topographical. It's one of the items listed by eBay seller historicpaper2.

Small picture here; click for nice large one (I hope).

Egypt, About 1882, With All the Trimmings

Here's the color frontispiece (a Chromolithograph) from Thomas W. Knox' The Boy Travellers in the Far East / Part Fourth / Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to Egypt and the Holy Land (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1883). There are plenty of other interesting pictures in this book, but this is the only one in color.

Another Experiment

Again a digital camera photograph of a picture in a magazine, processed in Photoshop. The Rigi Railroad, from the September 1894 issue of INLAND PRINTER and carried there as an advertisement for a half-tone photo-engraving company.

Start Here

I've been collecting interesting historical images, and put some of them on the web on a few specific-interest sites I host. This is a blog for general-interest topics.

Here's an experiment: Boston, Tremont Street, 1890's. From a photograph I took of a half-tone engraving in the February, 1895, issue of INLAND PRINTER.