Monday, January 5, 2015

Antique Children's Book Illustrations

What a great find by the MOTH over the holidays! He came home with an old mailing envelope full of little children's books from the 1880's! Most are basically in comic book format -- and hand sewn.

Copyright 1889 by McLoughlin Bros. New York

Some of the thin books are incredibly fragile, and one is torn clear through. This looks like a great scanning/restoration project for digital images!

I love the old detailed illustrations. They are printed in just two ink colors -- black and red. And there are no halftone screens as in today's photolithography. All the gradations are made with stippling, so I wonder if these might be some kind of etchings?

Then again, this image (from a series called "Mama Lovechild's Series"), sure looks like a woodcut, which was a popular technique in the years before the turn of the century (according to this exhibit).

Did you know there were Five Little Pigs? Or that Mother Goose has a son named Jack??? I really enjoyed flipping through the quaint titles.

There were other cool books in the envelope too, which I'm still going through...oh heaven! Including a Christmas storybook in full color.
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1 comment:

  1. Hello, my name is Brandy and I stumbled across your page here. These books you have can you tell me where you found them? It happens the the illustrator for these particular books is my great great great grandfather William Momberger . I have been trying to locate some of his work but as im sure you know it is very hard as they are very rare and old. Would love to more about them and if you might know where or how I could find some. Would greatly appreciate any help. Thank you, Brandy

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