Old prints/drawings

I would like my library to become a place where you can find unexpected things - and answers to your questions. Maybe one day it will look like that antique, labyrinthlike and slightly chaotic place you imagine a professor's den to be: a place overflowing of surprises you would never have imagined.

I mentioned in an earlier blog post that I love old prints or drawings of plants, insects and animals. Some of them are truly beautiful - plus, quite often they give you at least something of scientific value. That be the correct name of the item in question, naming of structural or skeletal parts, some latin to add to your vocabulary...perhaps simply a better understanding of the diversity of nature.

 The pictures certainly are a step in the right direction of that professor's den, don't you think?

Drawings of spiders.
Found in an antique store in Prague.
I love the details!

A bird and a flower. Prints from the 1800's sometime.
Found in an antiquarian in Oslo.
Not sure when the colour came to. 

A picture of a dragonfly I have had for a while.
This is where the idea came from.

Nowadays I find myself flipping through stacks of pictures (in addition to the usual stacks of books, of course) in second hand stores. Who knows where my next picture is waiting to be found!