Dictionary Iconography

The first 7 ornamental lettrines (I continue to support our co-opting of this french word) are by Napoléon Landais from either his 'Dictionnaire Général et Grammatical des Dictionnaires Français' (1834) or his 'Petit Dictionnaire Français Portatif' (1840).

The last 3 lettrines are from 'Le Grand Dictionnaire Universel' (1865) by Pierre Larousse.


The Université Pierre-Mendès-France in Grenoble have a database called 'Art Dico' in which the iconographical elements of 19th century french dictionaries are collected.

ADDIT Oct. 2012: the above link is dead and it appears the site has been moved to here: **Art Dico - illustrations ornamentales des dictionnaires**.


Actually, we are told that the images above are not really lettrines (illuminated letters); rather they are called iconophors - something of a neologism to describe an iconic letter together with surrounding pictures that start with that letter (apple = 'A' etc). There is a fair bit of english available and it's interesting to browse around - mouseover the website images to discover the name of each related picture. It's all easy. For instance, in one of the letter 'G' images above, you can see Gulliver and Galileo if you look hard enough. Some are more esoteric/french/difficult than others. To date they have 64 Dictionaries, 363 Ornaments and 1048 Items uploaded.

"In the fifteenth century, the inception of printing changed the way text was reproduced and transmitted. The old ornamentation, however, remained, though its original function as a means of glorifying the sacred word was progressively disappearing. Late in the seventeenth century, a few French dictionaries began offering ornamentation embodying a particular encounter of letter and image: the initial-letter introducing the A section, combined the letter A and an illustration of some entity whose name starts with A. This was congruent with the old principle of giving the reader a glimpse, on the threshold, of what is to come."

Botanical Illustrations by Georg Ehret

After studying horticulture in his native Germany, Georg Dionys Ehret (1708-1770) moved to Holland where he pursued botanical illustration. In a suitable testament to his distinguished talents, the great Carl Linneaus was among the first supporters of Ehret, with whom he collaborated on a book recording the contents of the renowned Georg Clifford estate ('Hortus Cliffortianus', 1838).

Ehret spent the second half of his life in England and was to become one of the most respected and influential botanical artists of the 18th century. He had already become known to the physician and passionate botanist, Chrisoph Trew, who acted as patron and publisher to Ehret for decades. Their collaboration produced one of the finest botanical works of the century in 'Plantae Selectae', which was published over about 20 years until 1769.

Linneaus wrote to Trew:

"The miracles of our century in the natural sciences are your work of Ehret's plants. Nothing to equal them was seen in the past or will be in the future."

The images above come from a small and very rare self-published series that Ehret engraved and personally coloured, the 18 illustrations being issued between 1748 and 1759. 'Plantae et Papiliones Rariores' is online at the University of Strasbourg and they have huge images available.
- The University of Maryland have a review of this series and discussion about both Ehret and Linnaeus by James L Reveal.
- Georg Ehret at Wikipedia.

The Infinitesmal II

The images above and in the previous post come from the 1838 book by Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg called 'Die Infusionsthierchen als Vollkomene Organismen'.

There is also another, earlier post - Microgeology - which has more of an outline about the extraordinary contributions to microbiology and paleontology made by Ehrenberg.

The Humboldt University Museum für Naturkunde have high resolution images from a number of works by Ehrenberg and they are all enormous. By way of justification to myself for blind downloading, I've added the image below which started out at a cool 65Mb (ouch!), from a work entitled 'Symbolae Physicae'.

The first image above is something of a mashup. Click everything for much larger versions.




Update: I nearly forgot. Following on from past centenary post precedents, I extend an open invitation to anyone who has links to book/print/graphic material -- particularly from the less represented areas of the world, but really, from anywhere/anytime -- that is in keeping with the style of this site, to make contact either by mail {peacay ATT gmail.com} or by adding a comment with a recommendation. I do look at everything. And no, the cupboard is not empty.

To those who have slipped links and pictures to me previously by way of email and delicious, if I haven't posted the material, there may be several reasons --- I haven't figured out how I might use it yet, the images are a bit small, there is a post somewhere here in the archives that covers it already, or it didn't grab me when I saw it the first time. I am nothing if not capricious. But I am grateful for any and all tips, pointers, website critiques, recommendations, life advice, date offers, dress criticism, recipes and the related somesuch. No need to be shy.

The Infinitesmal I

One of the sweetly sad pleasures of casually trawling the history of science literature is discovering works and characters of incredible depth and diversity that are not widely known. One of these prolific and brilliant pioneers is Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg who might otherwise be described as a microscopist extraordinaire.

He released 2 great monographs which basically divide between the living and non-living worlds examined under magnification during the 19th century. I have previously posted about the non-living: the microgeological and fossil samples Ehrenberg assiduously examined and recorded that gave rise to a new field within paleontology.

The wonderfully alien images above (and in the following post) come from his earlier 1838 treatise, 'Die Infusionsthierchen als Vollkomene Organismen', in which he identified a large number of unicellular organisms, particularly from the protist diatoms, and chief among them the radiolarians.

The Humboldt University Museum für Naturkunde have a large selection online from the enormous quantity of written and illustrated material Ehrenberg left behind. I have still not properly examined the contents. There is a very good reason for this: all of the images are huge, averaging around 10Mb each, with no thumbnails available. So although you will find much larger versions if you click on the images here, they have had to be scaled down substantially.

Unsurprisingly, Ernst Haeckel, who shared a common interest in radiolaria, is featured haphazardly in the Museum collection. The image and details below were only identified as: 'Haeckel, 1865, plate 1.' I don't think that particular double page illustration has been posted elsewhere.

• A wealth of Radiolaria links.
• The web archive version of a Palynology article on Ehrenberg (the original site which I linked last time appears to be dead).