Festive favourites

With the festive period approaching, I thought I’d share a few of my favourite pictures recently uploaded to the Royal Society Print Shop. Our high-quality prints make the perfect Christmas gift, and with images taken from the Society’s extraordinary collection of rare books, manuscripts and artefacts, there’s something for everyone…

RS.21949 Himalayan monal by Charles Joseph Hullmandel, after Elizabeth Gould. Tab LX in A century of birds from the Himalaya mountains (1832) by John Gould FRS

Produced from a drawing by Elizabeth Gould, this lithograph of the Himalayan monal by Charles Joseph Hullmandel perfectly captures the metallic lustre of the male bird’s plumage. Hullmandel was a printmaker who developed new techniques in lithography, aided by his study of chemistry under Michael Faraday FRS.

RS.21977 Moon by Joel Paul Kaltenhofer, after Tobias Mayer. Plate to Opera inedita volume I by Mayer and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (Göttingen, 1775)

This illustration of the Moon is the work of German astronomer Tobias Mayer (1723-1762), who used a micrometer to record the position of craters on the lunar surface. The map was the first of its kind, although it was published posthumously as part of Mayer’s collective works following his early death. The engraving was entrusted to his friend and the painter of his only portrait, Joel Paul Kaltenhofer.

RS.21961 Grey and coloured objects displaced by refraction, unknown engraver. Plate 3 to Zur Farbenlehre (Theory of colours) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Tübingen, 1810)

Following our Light: a colourful history exhibition, which ran until June this year, I’ve been adding optical illustrations to the digital collections. This scheme by Goethe, from his Theory of colours, shows the results of prism experiments on the effects of refraction on grey and coloured objects. The diagram is arranged in a segmented octagon, and the tones of grey have been created using aquatint, finished with hand-coloured swatches. The resulting print is a striking artwork in its own right.

RS.11671 Chladni figures by Mary Tomlinson, 1885. Illustrations from the paper ‘Note on an experiment by Chladni’ by Charles Tomlinson.

Moving from optics to acoustics, the art of ‘seeing sound’ is beautifully captured in these Chladni figures, created by dusting metal plates with sand or powder and subjecting them to vibrations by means of a violin bow. They’re taken from a paper by Charles Tomlinson FRS, who felt that the discovery by Ernst Chladni, ‘so fruitful in beautiful results’, had not been adequately represented on the page. The vibration patterns were faithfully recreated in pencil drawings by the author’s niece Mary Tomlinson.

RS.21716 Viscum album or white mistletoe by Johann Sebastian Müller, from his Illustratio systematis sexualis Linnaei (London, 1777)

And finally for a seasonal choice, this natural history illustration is the work of the botanist and illustrator Johann Sebastian Müller (John Miller). The hand-coloured engraving of white mistletoe evokes festive traditions and makes the perfect option for a unique greetings card or print.

If you’ve made it to the end of this blogpost without rushing to buy one of my selected images, then perhaps you’d prefer to browse the collection at leisure and choose the perfect picture for a meaningful gift – even if it happens to be for yourself!