Skip to main content
All 90 posts on

Art

Art in the Folger collections
Summer Retrospective: Woodcut, engraving, or what?
Collation

Summer Retrospective: Woodcut, engraving, or what?

Posted
Author
The Collation

If you’ve ever been confused by the differences between woodcuts, engravings, and etchings, clearly you’re not alone! This post by Erin Blake, from 2012, is perennially one of our most popular. So in case you missed it the first time…

Portrait of a Young African Woman
Collation

Portrait of a Young African Woman

Posted
Author
Alicia Meyer

A guest post by Alicia Meyer The Folger Shakespeare Library houses three etchings of African diasporic people by Wenceslaus Hollar. While we may never know the identities of the figures in these images, Hollar’s artistic choices direct how we see…

Drawn by Hayman, etched by Gravelot, preserved in Folger ART Vol. b72
Collation

Drawn by Hayman, etched by Gravelot, preserved in Folger ART Vol. b72

Posted
Author
Erin Blake

For the June 2019 “Crocodile Mystery” we asked you to spot the differences between these two pictures: Frontispiece illustration for Two Gentlemen of Verona from Thomas Hanmer’s 6-volume edition of Shakespeare’s plays, published 1743-44: original drawing (A) and published print…

The Location of Plates in a Book
Collation

The Location of Plates in a Book

Posted
Author
Caroline Duroselle-Melish

When consulting a book with plates (that is, inserted leaves printed separately from the text), it is best not to assume that they have been placed in the same location in all copies of the same edition nor that their…

British Book Illustrations
Collation

British Book Illustrations

Posted
Author
Emily Wahl

Good news, picture-seekers! If you’ve ever tried to search Luna for a picture of something specific, you’ve probably noticed that relatively few digital images match one-to-one with their source descriptions. For example, although a keyword search for “dog” will bring…

About that frontispiece portrait of Hannah Woolley....
Collation

About that frontispiece portrait of Hannah Woolley....

Posted
Author
Heather Wolfe

I was delighted by the range of responses we got for last week’s Crocodile post on the identity of the woman in the engraving: Catherine of Braganza, Cleopatra, Lady Frances Egerton, Elizabeth Nash nee Hall (Shakespeare’s grand-daughter), Hannah Woolley, and…

Engraved to Sell
Collation

Engraved to Sell

Posted
Author
Caroline Duroselle-Melish

Printed ephemera can be exciting, especially when it reveals information that can be found nowhere else. When it is also a very rare piece with only a couple of extant copies recorded, and its design is intriguing, the discovery is…

Proof print from the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery
Collation

Proof print from the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery

Posted
Author
Erin Blake

As a couple of you guessed correctly last week, the June Crocodile Mystery is a proof for the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery print of Lady Macbeth illustrating Macbeth, act 1, scene 5.See the Collation post “Proof prints, part one” for more on the meaning of “proof”…

Portia in Absentia
Letter from Percy Anderson including the phrase
Collation

Portia in Absentia

Posted
Author
Abbie Weinberg

The guesses on this month’s Crocodile Mystery definitely pointed in the right direction: the mystery image this month is indeed the monogram signature of an artist. But rather than PH, it is PA: Percy Anderson. Anderson (1851-1928) was a well-respected…

Drawing for photographic reproduction
Collation

Drawing for photographic reproduction

Posted
Author
Erin Blake

This month’s crocodile mystery asked what’s going on with the odd-looking painting technique in an original work of art, shown in a detail. Here’s a view of the whole thing: Charles Sheldon, “Ellen Terry as Hermione in ‘The Winter’s Tale’…

Twentieth-century illustration technique revealed in a "snow Globe"
Collation

Twentieth-century illustration technique revealed in a "snow Globe"

Posted
Author
Erin Blake

While looking through the Folger collection for snow scenes (it’s that time of year!) I stumbled across this image of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, drawn in the 1960s by C. Walter Hodges: C. Walter Hodges (1909-2004). The Second Globe Under Snow.…

Dryden's Virgil, Ogilby's Virgil, and Aeneas's nose job
Collation

Dryden's Virgil, Ogilby's Virgil, and Aeneas's nose job

Posted
Author
Erin Blake

First, a confession: this month’s Crocodile Mystery was originally going to pose a question along the lines of “What’s weird about this image?” or “What makes this picture especially interesting?” but I gave up. I couldn’t figure out how to…

1 2 3 4 5 8