Sunday Favorites - The Pulse of Nature

In short I am convinced it is a most
ridiculous thing to go round the world,
when by staying quietly, the world
will go round with you

Charles Darwin



Yunfun Tan

Animals in Art - Levi Fisher Ames

Nothing is more beautiful than to know all.

Athanasius Kircher

 

Wood carver Levi Fisher Ames (1840-1923) was originally a carpenter when he began working on his menagerie of small wooden animal figures, some of which were based on real animals, some were purely imaginary. Ames created a very personal cabinet of curiosities: several hundred fabulous creatures housed in glassfronted shadowboxes, completed with hand written labels.

Movie Moments - Jean Painlevé

Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll.
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain.
Man marks the earth with ruin,
but his control stops with the shore.

Lord Byron


watch the videos below

Marvels of Creatures and Strange Things Existing

Kitab Aja'ib al-makhluqat wa Gharaib al-Mawjudat

literally "The Wonders of Creation and the Curiosities of Existence", or

Marvels of Creatures and Strange Things Existing

Merchant from Isfahan Flying


Kitab Aja'ib al-makhluqat wa Gharaib al-Mawjudat, literally "The Wonders of Creation," compiled in the middle 1200s in what is now Iran or Iraq. The vibrantly illustrated work is considered one of the most important natural history texts of the medieval Islamic world.

Mary Delany - Paper Mosaiks

Mary Delany, Ornithogalum Pyramidale, Star of Bethlehem, 1779

Snake-Calligraphy

No sooner had the Snake beheld this reverend figure, than the King began to speak, and asked: "Whence comest thou?" "From the chasms where the gold dwells," said the Snake. "What is grander than gold?" inquired the King. "Light," replied the Snake. "What is more refreshing than light?" said he. "Speech," answered she.

Haeckel's Visions

Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted
with the memories and the dreams of Time.

H. P. Lovecraft

watch the video below

Shiohi no tsuto - Gifts of the ebb tide

Shiohi no tsuto (Gifts of the ebb tide)
The shell book. (1789)

Painted by Kitagawa Utamaro (?-1806),
edited by Akera Kanko (1738-98)

A colored picture book of Kyoka (satirical poems) about shell collecting. 

Detail

Natural History Illustrations - Some Favorites

Maria Sibylla Merian,  Surinam Lizard

Things with Wings

Polaroid by Andrej Tarkovski