#autotype

“I’m… I’m s-sorry…”

Heartbreaking, right?

Try “I’m a-sorry.”

A Social Distancing Feathursday

It looks like this boy and this raven are dutifully following the mandates of social distancing during this time of COVID-19 -- even if the year is 1887. This illustration is from our copy of Deutsche Jugend: Neue Folge, Band 3, published in Berlin by Alphons Dürr in 1887. The poem is by the German author and poet Frida Schanz and the illustration is by German artist Fedor Flinzer, who was popularly known as the “Raphael of Cats” (view a post we did on him a few years ago). The engraving is by the German engraver Georg Meisenbach, and is probably an autotype, a halftone photoengraving process Meisenbach invented and patented in 1882.

Good-looking raven, though, eh? And how about that illustration of a raven in a top hat (what’s that about?), and that ominous raven silhouetted against the moon?! Or are they crows?

And remember on this #Feathursday to keep your distance!!

Gate of the Pandrosium, Showing Details of the Ornament by William James Stillman

American, 1869 (negative) and 1870 (autotype)

carbon print (autotype)