3 Free eBooks – January 2020

Starting out the new year…I selected 3 books with an art and history skew from my accumulation of reading this month.

Dillon, Edward. Glass. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. London: Methuen and Co. 1907. Available from Project Gutenberg here. The book is a history of glass (up until the early 1900s) with illustrations of pieces in museum collections. I paid more attention to the illustrations than the text. I’ve always been interested in ancient glass because it points to the step beyond basketry and pottery in our manufacturing expertise. It a material we think about as being ‘breakable’ but is often very enduring.

Whitney, Frederick. Blackboard Sketching. Springfield, Massachusetts: Milton Bradley Company. 1909. Available from Internet Archive here. Written at a time when many students were learning to write and draw with blackboard slates and slate pencils…it provides an idea of how students were taught. Early classrooms used a lot less paper!

LaFontaine, Bruce. Bridges of the World Coloring Book. Dover Publication. 1994. Available from Internet Archive here. The bridges are organized chronologically. The sample image I show below is the colored version (as the end page of the book) of page 10…a bridge from China built about 1100. The book includes short descriptions the design features and technologies the bridge builders utilized. Obviously, these bridges have proven to be very durable.

Enjoy these 3 online books!