NEW ESSAY — Centuries before the advent of film, the camera obscura cast moving images into darkened rooms. Julie Park explores its early modern allure — from scientific tool to dream machine:

The first mass-produced book to deviate from a rectilinear format, at least in the United States, is thought to be this beautiful 1863 edition of Red Riding Hood, published by Boston-based publisher Louis Prang. Leaf through its person-shaped pages here:

Peter Fabris’ exquisite illustrations for William Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei (1776–79), a report on the 18th-century eruptions of Mount Vesuvius:

Hokusai’s Illustrated Warrior Vanguard of Japan and China (1836) assembles action-filled images of warriors, both historical and legendary:

Alfred Tennyson — born #onthisday in 1809 — enjoying a swing while his "poetic fancy" sparkles in the night sky. From a 19th-century book of celebrity cartoons:

Bishop's Cap Cactus. Native to the highlands of northeastern and central Mexico, it gets its name from its resemblance to a bishop's mitre. More from French botanist Charles Lemaire's Iconographie descriptive des cactées (1841) here:

Detail from the ceiling of the Arena Chapel, in Padua, magnificently adorned with Giotto frescoes in ca. 1305. One of the many beautiful images featured in our essay "Primary Sources: A Natural History of the Artist's Palette" by @philipcball —

Illustration from The Living Forest (1925), by the Canadian painter Arthur Heming who — having been diagnosed with colourblindness as a child — worked for most of his life in a distinctive palette of black, yellow, and white:

Julian Barnes on when a young Guy de Maupassant — born #onthisday in 1850 — was invited to lunch by A.C. Swinburne. A flayed human hand, porn, monkey meat, and inordinate amounts of alcohol, all made for a truly strange Anglo-French encounter: #OTD

Michael J. North takes a look at one of the most important books in the history of veterinary medicine — Markham’s Masterpiece — a seminal 17th-century work on the care of horses.

New look.⁠.⁠.Illustration from a Book of Hours attributed to an artist of the Ghent-Bruges school and dating from the late 15th century. More rainbow-coloured "grotesques" here: @BeineckeLibrary

Repeat dog pattern, from sample book of French textile design, 1863. See more here:

Today is #InternationalOwlAwarenessDay. Here's "Two Owls", a 1921 print by Dutch artist Julie de Graag. Buy as a print here: And more on the good work of owl conservation here:

Filippo Balbi, Testa Anatomica, 1854: Available a a print here:

Sniffing ozone, 1910.⠀⠀.⠀⠀.One of the many bizarre photos in High Frequency Electric Currents in Medicine and Dentistry (1910) by champion of electro-therapeutics Samuel Howard Monell, who did “more for static electricity than any other living man”:

Drawing and etching by Thomas Rowlandson, from The Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of the Picturesque (1809–1812) which follows the good doctor’s adventures about the countryside in search of the perfect scenery. More here:

#SundayReads: For more than half a millennium, the dance of death in European visual art has imagined a tango between the quick and the dead. @AllisonCMeier explores:

From whole multi-paragraph excerpts to single lines, this wonderful little book dedicates itself, as the title declares, to presenting the "wit and wisdom" to be found in Miguel de Cervantes' masterpiece Don Quixote:

Details from a 15th-century manuscript titled Vaticinia de Pontificibus depicting gloriously surreal portraits of various Popes in the midst of the prophecies relating to them. More here:

Stereograms from the first ever publication on a Neanderthal skeleton, L’Homme Fossile de La Chapelle-aux-Saints (1911). A special viewfinder combined these stereograms to give the illusion of three dimensions. More here:

Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell — who died #onthisday in 1922 — goes to kiss his wife Mabel while she stands in one of his spectacular tetrahedral kites. See more of these wonderful creations (and the kiss realised) in our post here: #OTD