Carta Marina - From 1518 to 1519, Olaus Magnus made a journey across Sweden. On his journey, he encountered fish the size of elephants, sea serpents, demons and a tribe of pygmies.
posted by tellurian on Dec 3, 2007 - 12 comments

Eric Gill was a print-maker, sculptor, typographer and thinker [pdf]. An artist whose life has had quite a bit of drama associated with it. There is even a new society dedicated to parsing the impacts of his legacy.
posted by sciurus on Nov 14, 2006 - 18 comments

Wondermark An Illustrated Weekly Jocularity. While you're there, be sure to check out Malki's Comic Script Doctor columns (in particular his Freudian interpretation of Marmaduke).
posted by brundlefly on Jan 29, 2006 - 15 comments

Frans Masereel - a great woodcut artist, pioneer of the wordless novel. You can see all of his 1925 Die Stadt (The City) and Landscapes and Voices (1929) at Graphic Witness (Though his Passionate Journey is one of my favorite books.) "First published in Germany in 1925 The City is a portrait of urban Europe between the wars, told in one hundred woodcuts of exceptional force and beauty. Frans Masereel portrays parks and factories, shipyards and brothels, crowds, lovers, and lonely individuals with remarkable subtlety and nuance while exploiting the stark contrast of the woodcut medium.
posted by vacapinta on Aug 21, 2002 - 8 comments

This is not a medieval woodcut! Though it appears everywhere, this particular woodcut has been repeatedly mis-identified and used most often to support the idea that the medieval world thought the earth was flat, an idea whose inception can be traced to this man, a fiction writer who not only wrote this but also this.
posted by vacapinta on Jun 9, 2002 - 8 comments