Prison playing cards

A selection of handmade and delicately stencil-printed playing cards,
made by inmates of Russian prisons, ca. 1980s – 1990s.

Hello, Goodbye

From a series of postcards by Kenward Elmslie

 

And a note from Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz

The crowd outside the bordello

A peepshow (or kullisentheater) by Martin Engelbrecht, circa 1750,
showing the exterior of a bordello (Das Bordell).
Hand-colored copper-engraved sheets, made in Augsburg, Germany.

On Board Noah’s Ark with Ludwig B.

From a group of letters from Ludwig Bemelmans to his editor at Viking Press,
Pascal “Pat” Covici, sending news of his travels, works in progress, and adventures, ca. 1938-1962.

Playing Card sample book (Irish Free State)

Another sample book, for cards produced in, and proudly representing, the Irish Free State, ca. 1936.

Of fishes and salvage

Images prepared for a volume of a multi-part Traite general des Pesches (i.e. Peches), edited by H. M. Duhamel du Monceau.
While the focus of the volume, developed over the 18th century and finally published in its entirety between 1769-1782, is on varieties of fishing and methods of catching them, it also discusses matters related to life along the seashore. such as the droit de varech, the important understanding of the legal limits of salvaging materials washed ashore from shipwrecks.

Passport

Ezra Pound (YCAL MSS 178)

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Jean Toomer (JWJ MSS 1)

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Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant (YCAL MSS 3)

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Witold Gombrowicz

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Henry McBride (YCAL MSS 31)

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Scofield Thayer (YCAL MSS 34)

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Isabel Wilder (UNCAT ZA MSS 455)

History Repeating

A comic image from a special edition of a French magazine from 1902,
focusing on the folly of the stock market.