Sunday, May 15, 2011

Fire the Imagination

Textbooks are so much more appealing and approachable when the graphic design and illustrations of the book are given great thought to, as they were in the early years of the 20th century.

Binding design and illustrative paintings help to fire the imagination, which is always a great aid to learning.

cover binding

Ernest Wallcousins
frontispiece
The Tempatation of Ea-Bani

title page

Ernest Wallcousins
Merodach Sets Forth to Attack Tiamat

Ernest Wallcousins
The Slaying of the Bull of Ishtar

Ernest Wallcousins
The Babylonian Deluge

Ernest Wallcousins
Nebuchadnezzar in the Hanging Gardens

Edwin Long
The Babylonian Marriage Market

Ernest Wallcousins
The Shepherd Finds the Babe Semiramis

The edition I own has the misfortune to have a plate sliced out, probably more than half a century ago. That dastardly deed has earned someone a few decades in a hole in Hades, without benefit of seeing Ishtar. The missing plate, below, grabbed off the internet.

Ernest Wallcousins
Ishtar in Hades

1 comment:

Larry MacDougall said...

Well, it's easy to see why the culprit took that one.