Born in Bohemia, Wenceslas (Vaclav) Hollar (wikipedia; illustrated chronology of his life; essay on Hollar) was one of the leading etchers and illustrators of the middle 17th Century, working primarily in England and Belgium. The University of Toronto has placed almost his entire works online, including more than 4,000 images and some complete illustrated books. Some favorites: the man himself; simple, powerful Illustrations of Genesis; The Pack of Knaves; Elephants and Flowers; Shells; Fitting out a Hull; and Muffs (sfw). Most images are zoomable, and you can create marked lists and compare images side by side.
posted by Rumple on Jun 17, 2007 - 8 comments

Forget ink. These days you have to tattoo your laptop. See how it's made as makezine shows how they etched a very cool bunny infused Tsunami on a powerbok, also see these made by a real ink artist, and more images of the making of the tarsier Powerbook. For atari lovers, there's the Atari laptop.
posted by dabitch on Apr 4, 2007 - 28 comments

The Works of Giovanni Battista Piranesi: high-resolution scans of all of Piranesi’s etchings. Also, the plates from Les Ruines De Pompei by François Mazois (1812-38), and, the complete 9-volume Le Antichità di Ercolano Esposte (The Antiquities discovered in Herculaneum) published in Naples from 1755-62. Also, at the same site (UT-PICURE: the Center for Research on Pictorial Cultural Resources, at The University of Tokyo), images from the Stibbert Collection of Japanese costume.
posted by misteraitch on Jul 4, 2006 - 11 comments

"This vellum-bound curiosity is one of the rarest and most mysterious etching suites of the late Renaissance." Braccelli's fantastic drawings are excellent examples of early (early, early) surrealism. For higher quality images, try this link instead.
posted by Pinwheel on Mar 17, 2003 - 14 comments

An unfinished work representing a centuries-old mystery and containing an encrypted signature, Pythagorean philosophy and celestial numbers... Could it be the new Neal Stephenson novel? Actually, it's Johann Sebastian Bach's "Art of Fugue", believed by some to have been conceived as "absolute music" never intended to be played at all. Artist Elizabeth Harington has created a lovely and loving visual interpretation of the work in the form of 14 folded sculptures (nicely presented by Colophon).
posted by taz on Sep 17, 2002 - 12 comments