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Illustrations from Japanese fireworks catalogues (ca. 1880s) — https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/japanese-fireworks-catalogues #newyearseve #fireworks

This is not a painting. It is made entirely of wood, its surface flat. A detail from the 15th-century "Studiolo Gubbio", one of the finest examples of intarsia, the masterful art of fitting together pieces of wood to make images: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/exquisite-rot-spalted-wood-and-the-lost-art-of-intarsia

Today Mexico celebrates the #DayOfTheDead. Skeletal imagery features heavily, influenced in no small part by the work of José Guadalupe Posada, known for his satirical and politically acute broadside prints called "calaveras" (skulls) — https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-calaveras-of-jose-guadalupe-posada #diademuertos

Looking for some Halloween costume inspo? Some first-rate ideas in this 18th-century demonology book: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/compendium-of-demonology-and-magic-ca-1775/ #halloween

Front cover to Flatland (1884) by Edwin Abbott Abbott, who died #onthisday in 1926. Read Ian Stewart's introduction to the strange tale of A. Square's geometric adventures, the first ever book that could be described as “mathematical fiction” https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/aspiring-to-a-higher-plane #otd

The Island of Sardinia, by 16th-century Ottoman admiral Piri Reis. See more of his exquisite maps here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-maps-of-piri-reis

October is #BatAppreciationMonth! Here they are being fully appreciated in plate 67 from Ernst Haeckel’s dazzling Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms of Nature), published in 1904. More about the image, including details of the line-up, here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/ernst-haeckel-s-bats-1904

A Treatise on Artificial Limbs (1899) – an encyclopaedic account of limb prosthetics, from a relative of the man who invented the rubber foot: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/treatise-on-artificial-limbs