Don’t you love illustrator Sanna Paananen’s retro shapes and colors?

More at Pekka Illustration Agency.

I wrote a post a couple of years ago about Windsor McCay’s marvellous Little Nemo in Slumberland newspaper comics from the early 20th century, and it’s consistently been among my most popular posts – which isn’t surprising, the drawings are so wonderful and imaginative. Every strip depicts a dream of the little hero Nemo.

Here are some more of my favorite Little Nemo strips. I’ve uploaded extra-large images, so you can click and zoom to see them up close.

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Here are some smashing dress designs from the June, 1926 issue of Pictorial Review. There’s an address to order the patterns from, but I doubt they’re still available, unfortunately.

Click and zoom for a detailed look.

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I really like the style of 1930s illustration. The June 1932 issue of American Magazine is full of great pictures.

Cover illustration by Hayden C. Hayden

Probak razor blades ad

illustration for Captain Grim by Donald Teague

color illustration for Captain Grim by Norman Wilkinson

color illustration for Fancy Dress by J. Gotlieb

illustration for Fancy Dress by J. Gotlieb

illustration for The Tall Ladder by Saul Tepper

second illustration for The Tall Ladder by Saul Tepper

illustration for Forlorn Island by Harold Von Schmidt

color illustration for The Last of His Line by James E. Allen

illustration for The Last of His Line by James E. Allen

More ephemera

Abroad, a delightful travel book for children, is by Thomas Crane and Ellen Houghton, is written entirely in verse, and follows the adventures of a London family traveling in France. Found in the children’s section of the Internet Archive

The pictures in the book are gorgeous, and beautifully composed. Here is a sample.

You can look at the entire book (which I highly recommend), download it, and even order print copies on the Internet Archive display page.

The Library of Congress has extensive online digital collections, including a comprehensive collection of Works Progress Administration posters from the 1930s and 40s. Here are a few examples (click for a closer look):

The Seattle Asian Art Museum is showing a marvelous exhibit of Indian watercolor paintings from the 17th through the 19th century, titled Garden and Cosmos. The paintings were Rajasthani royal commissions, and were only recently discovered in Marwar / Jodhpur. They span a period of many decades and range from playful domestic scenes of palace life to metaphysical maps of the cosmos. Many of the paintings are giant miniatures. That is to say, they are 4 or 5 feet long and filled with amazingly intricate and colorful detail.

Here is a painting from the exhibition, Sage Makandeya’s Ashram , attributed to the “Darga Master”. Click and zoom to see a very high resolution image.

There’s a nice interactive guide to the exhibition at Seattle Art Museum and another at the Smithsonian’s Freer-Sackler Galleries, where they were exhibited previously. Neither site includes the paintings that I found the most delightful, unfortunately – but it’s best to see them in person anyway, and pore over their every charming detail.

Here are some more paintings and some detail excerpts.

The show is at Seattle Asian Art Museum until April 26th, 2009, then it will move to the British Museum and the National Museum of India. Highly recommended.

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I’ve posted before about the fascinating digital collections at the University of Washington Libraries. Tooling through the early advertising archive today I came across these old Rainier beer ads from turn of the century Seattle and surrounding areas. They seem to be trying to expand their customer base by marketing Rainier as a healthful tonic for women, children, and old people. Gesundheit, Grandpa!

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Here are some of the charming illustrations from Edward Lear’s Nonsense Botany.

Queerifloria Babyöides

Piggiwiggia Pyramidalis

Armchairia Comfortabilis

Manypeeplia Upsidownia

Crabbia Horrida

Smalltoothcombia Domestica

I wonder if these drawings were the inspiration for James Thurber’s New Natural History. The entire Nonsense Botany is available on Project Gutenberg.