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Botanicals and books on zoology, insect, and marine life are important sources for design and ornament; coloration and patterns from the natural world inspire artists and designers in many ways. The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library has a great collection of these resources available for study. The Cabinet was published as monthly issues and contains entries on the natural history of various species in America as well as accounts of hunting expeditions.

The muted colors and illustrative style of the Arts & Crafts movement period are featured in this color trade catalog from 1912-13. The company focused on making large wallpaper friezes, and was one of the first companies to develop a washable color wallpaper printed with oils that could be cleaned with a damp cloth or sponge. It was called San-kro-mura, the “sanitary” wall covering. The company produced wallpaper with panoramic views of mountains, deserts, forests, lakes, and scenic narratives of folklore and history.

A rare illustrated German nursery rhyme children’s book, Paradisefibel features colored illustrations by Richard Seewald (1889-1976), a German visual artist. With highly stylized illustrations, this fairy tale includes humorous animals in human situations, such as singing frogs and playing monkeys. Written by husband and wife Joseph and Maria Koch, the rhythmic flow of the text works in conjunction with Koch’s development of the “finger-reading” method of sign language.

This is one of over 1,600 titles at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library classified as a pop-up and movable book. Some of these titles have been in the collection since the founding of the Cooper Union Museum in 1897. However, the majority of the pop-up collection was acquired in the 1980s and continues to grow through donations from collectors and select purchases. Spanning over 500 years, these action-packed works of art were intended to calculate, educate, entertain, and amaze. This book is a particularly rare example on astronomy published in the USSR in 1982.

Charles-Antoine Jombert (1712–1784) was a French bookseller and publisher descended from a dynasty of booksellers. This book serves as a manual on techniques for figure drawing, featuring over 100 copper engravings representing different parts of the human anatomy. Some plates are based on original designs done by masters such as Titian and Raphael with various tips for mastering drawings such as anatomical proportions, academic scenes, and landscapes.

Christophe Huet (1700-1759), French artist of the Rococo period, illustrated this rare first edition depicting examples of “singerie.” Singerie, derived from the French word “monkey trick," a visual genre which features fashionably attired monkeys humorously imitating human behavior became a popular and amusing diversion for the upper classes in 18th century France. Singerie were depicted in paintings by such artists as Jean-Antoine Watteau as well as motifs in marquetry, textiles, and porcelain.

This first and only edition of the earliest book on decorative arts designer Dagobert Peche (1881-1923), written by art historian and Vienna University professor Max Eisler (1881-1937), includes 100 full plates of Peche’s designs for lamps, glass, textiles, ceramics, jewelry, silverware, wallpaper, and interiors. Peche became artistic director of the Wiener Werkstätte in 1915, a production community of visual artists founded by Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann in Vienna in 1903.

This beautifully illustrated pattern book, part of a five volume study of mid-19th century French architecture by artist and chromolithographer Victor Petit, includes fifty color lithographs of designs for gardens. The colorful, full-page illustrations provide designs for the placement of paths, flowerbeds, waterways, and garden structures for properties ranging from one sixth of an acre to more than seven and a half acres.

This is an illustrated catalog of the significant glass collection of Felix Slade (1790-1868), noted philanthropist, bibliophile, and collector of engravings and etchings, whose scholarships formed the London Slade School of Art. He prepared the Slade Catalogue of his glass collection, edited after his death, which he hoped would “be useful in encouraging the study and practice of this country (England)." In the preface, he explains his early attraction to Venetian glass, and expanded his scope to include specimens of various ages and countries.

Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904), the creator of Animals in Motion, was an English photographer who pioneered photographic studies of motion and early works in motion-picture projection. His massive portfolio was the culmination of 15 years of work that contributed to developments in the science of biomechanics and athletics. Muybridge’s experiments developed new visual technologies that produced objective and accurate movements of humans and animals. Each movement is presented as a measurable phenomenon.

A Collection of Alphabets Dedicated to Artists is a small pattern book of decorative and ornamented typefaces for alphabets and numbers. Containing variations of common Roman, Gothic, and Italian letter forms, it offers letters of the alphabet formed by human figures, silhouettes of human figures, and animals. Interestingly, it also has a page of the letters formed by hands in sign language alphabet.

This extremely rare 1940 trade catalog represents the output of 10 state owned ceramics factories in small towns and villages all over the Ukraine after industry was nationalized in 1918. Today, we are more familiar with the graphic arts of Communist Russia as vehicles for propaganda, such as posters. The decorative arts of utilitarian objects, like the tableware featured in this catalog, were also important vehicles for disseminating political concepts of the new social order and Soviet nationalism to the masses in everyday life.

Part of a three-volume collection of Native American biographies and strikingly vivid portraits, this publication contains some of the finest American lithography of the 19th century. Published from 1836 to 1844, Thomas McKenney, US Superintendent of Indian Trade, wanted to preserve "in the archives of the Government whatever of the aboriginal man can be rescued from the destruction which awaits his race." His enlightened view that American Indians ought to be "looked upon as human beings, having bodies and souls like ours" was unfortunately shared by few at that time.

This book takes an illustrative scientific approach towards understanding how interwoven conditions such as hydrology, oxygen levels, and plant canopies impact the types of species that can be found in freshwater wetlands. These ‘abiotic’ factors contribute to the overall development and adaptation of microorganisms, invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants in wetlands. Even with the scientific approach, The Biology of Freshwater Wetlands is easy to read for researchers, students, and others interested in ecology.

Tiles and ceramics produced in Iznik between the 15^th and 17^th centuries represent a significant artistic achievement for Turkey. Tiles were frequently used as decoration in Turkish Seljuk period (1071-1243 AD) architecture for important public buildings. Beginning with the Ottomans in the 15^th century, there was increasing demand for tiles, which were used to decorate the mosques and palaces of their new capital of Istanbul.

This limited-edition set of 43 vibrant, color printed cards housed in a custom box is parts that together comprise artist Sanford Biggers’ explorations of identity, rituals, and iconography. Divided into three sections—afronomix, fetico, and fides—the images offer moments of both intimacy and surrealism.

“Let your motto be resistance! resistance! resistance! No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance. What kind of resistance you had better make, you must decide by the circumstances that surround you, and according to the suggestion of expediency.” This powerful quote from Henry Highland Garnet inspired the title of this book. Dr.

Ever since the surviving ship of Magellan's fleet returned to Spain in 1522 with birds of paradise, all specimens known in Europe through the 18th century were prepared and preserved by native collectors with the bones and feet removed. As a result, Linnaeus' Systema Naturae (10th ed., 1758) gave the greater bird-of-paradise the name Paradisaea apoda (= without feet).

An early work in the French literature of hydraulic engineering. In the preface, Bouillet states that some of the machines he proposes were used in Holland and that some of his descriptions are translations of the Dutch. He describes methods of dredging rivers, constructing slipways and sluices, clearing ports and harbors, and maintaining river banks. He also discusses two techniques of raising a sunken ship and a way of blowing the deck of a ship with gunpowder to reveal cargo and then, salvaging it with diving bells made of copper.

René Primevère Lesson, having served as surgeon/pharmacist/naturalist on the round-the-world scientific voyage of the Coquille (1822-1825), subsequently published several works in ornithology and mammalogy. Les Trochilidées is the third and last volume of his classic work on hummingbirds, and its purchase completes the Smithsonian Libraries' set. Beautifully illustrated, the plates are color-printed and finished by hand to accompany the species descriptions and a general natural history of hummingbirds. This copy survives in sheets as issued, folded but un-cut and un-bound.