The masthead says it all: books, illustrations, science, history, visual materia obscura, eclectic book art. — Drawn

Another super link from Drawn (it’s a great site, what can I say?): BibliOdyssey — curious vintage and antique images culled from digital book exhibits across the web.

Mr. Slakethirst introduced me to enlightenment era Xylotheks, today. Xylotheks combine botany and book arts as well as book arts and container making. See below:

A xylothek is generally speaking a collection of simple pieces of wood specimens placed together in some kind of cupboard. In a refined form it is in the shape of “books” where you can find details from the tree inside, everything arranged as a “library”. This latter form flourished in Germany around 1790-1810. Four different manufacturers existed and three of them offered their products for sale…Each “book” describes a certain tree species and is made out of the actual wood (the “covers”). The spine is covered by the bark, where mosses and lichens from the same tree are arranged. “Books” of shrubs are covered with mosses with split branches on both covers and spines. —The Wooden Library in Alnarp

Large photos of the Alnarp collection of Xylotheks can be seen at The Wooden Library in Alnarp website. Wonderful stuff!

Thank you, “Drawn”:http://www.drawn.ca, for introducing me to Duane Keiser and his “painting a day”:http://duanekeiser.blogspot.com/. Mr. Keiser paints juicy, postcard-size compositions with a found object, trompe l’oeil aesthetic. And that’s not all… Once a week, he records the progress of one of his paintings “on video”:http://paintvid.blogspot.com/. An inspirational resource for aspiring painters.

The Visual Communications Program at the University of Delaware has created a nifty flash-based letterspacing workshop that anyone can join (at least for now). Test your typographic mettle and prepare to get cross-eyed!

I just completed a coat of arms on scratchboard for The College of Mythic Cartography. Check it out!