Snowflake Toast.

Snowflake Toast – Take 1 quart of milk, one-half cup cream and a little salt. Mix a tablespoonful of flour with a little of the milk, and add when the milk is boiling hot. Let it cook until the flour has no raw taste. Have ready the whites of 2 eggs thoroughly beaten, and after the milk and cream are well cooked, stir in the whites of the eggs lightly and allow it to remain over the fire long enough for the whites to coagulate – about half a minute is long enough. This quantity is sufficient for about 12 slices of bread well toasted. Dip the sliced in hot milk, take out quickly and pack together for about 3 minutes, then pour this snowflake mixture over them.

Oh, boiled milk, :shudder: I think I’ll pass on this, but the name is rather grand, is it not? From this 1897 book, the snowflake toast is on page 330.

Mira calligraphiae monumenta.

Joris Hoefnagel (Flemish / Hungarian, 1542 – 1600), and Georg Bocskay (Hungarian, died 1575)
Medlar, Poppy Anemone, and Pear, 1561 – 1562; illumination added 1591 – 1596, Watercolors, gold and silver paint, and ink on parchment. Leaf: 16.6 × 12.4 cm (6 9/16 × 4 7/8 in.) The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Joris Hoefnagel (Flemish / Hungarian, 1542 – 1600), and Georg Bocskay (Hungarian, died 1575)
Crane Fly and Ants, 1561 – 1562; illumination added 1591 – 1596, Watercolors, gold and silver paint, and ink on parchment. Leaf: 16.6 × 12.4 cm (6 9/16 × 4 7/8 in.) The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Joris Hoefnagel (Flemish / Hungarian, 1542 – 1600), and Georg Bocskay (Hungarian, died 1575)
Basil Thyme, Poppy Anemone, and Myrtle, 1561 – 1562; illumination added 1591 – 1596, Watercolors, gold and silver paint, and ink on parchment. Leaf: 16.6 × 12.4 cm (6 9/16 × 4 7/8 in.) The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Joris Hoefnagel (Flemish / Hungarian, 1542 – 1600), and Georg Bocskay (Hungarian, died 1575)
Queen of Spain Fritillary, Apple, Mouse, and Creeping Forget-Me-Not, 1561 – 1562; illumination added 1591 – 1596, Watercolors, gold and silver paint, and ink on parchment. Leaf: 16.6 × 12.4 cm (6 9/16 × 4 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Joris Hoefnagel (Flemish / Hungarian, 1542 – 1600), and Georg Bocskay (Hungarian, died 1575)
Rocket Larkspurs, Tulip, Scorpion, Millepede, and European Filbert, 1561 – 1562; illumination added 1591 – 1596, Watercolors, gold and silver paint, and ink on parchment. Leaf: 16.6 × 12.4 cm (6 9/16 × 4 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

In the 1500s, as printing became the most common method of producing books, intellectuals increasingly valued the inventiveness of scribes and the aesthetic qualities of writing. From 1561 to 1562, Georg Bocskay, the Croatian-born court secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, created this Model Book of Calligraphy in Vienna to demonstrate his technical mastery of the immense range of writing styles known to him.

About thirty years later, Emperor Rudolph II, Ferdinand’s grandson, commissioned Joris Hoefnagel to illuminate Bocskay’s model book. Hoefnagel added fruit, flowers, and insects to nearly every page, composing them so as to enhance the unity and balance of the page’s design. It was one of the most unusual collaborations between scribe and painter in the history of manuscript illumination.

Because of Hoefnagel’s interest in painting objects of nature, his detailed images complement Rudolph II’s celebrated Kunstkammer, a cabinet of curiosities that contained bones, shells, fossils, and other natural specimens. Hoefnagel’s careful images of nature also influenced the development of Netherlandish still life painting.

In addition to his fruit and flower illuminations, Hoefnagel added to the Model Book a section on constructing the letters of the alphabet in upper- and lowercase.

Every page of these works are absolutely exquisite, in all aspects. There are a lot of them, too! You can see them all here, and they are free to download in several sizes.

A Young Daughter of the Picts (ca. 1585)

Originally thought to be one of John White’s drawings from his 16th-century Virginia expedition, this colourful miniature is now attributed to the French artist Jacques Le Moyne. It does not show a North American native as first thought but rather imagines an early inhabitant of the British Isles, a member of the Picts, a group of people who lived in what is now modern-day Scotland during the Late Iron Age and Early Medieval periods. As Lisa Ford from the Yale Center for British Art notes, the image was most likely “intended to remind readers that early natives of the British Isles existed in a savage state similar to natives in the Americas”. Although the Picts are often said to have tattooed themselves, there is little actual evidence for this, though their name does seem to stem from the Latin word Picti meaning “painted or tattooed people”. As Ford comments, Le Moyne’s rendering of this young woman in a head-to-toe floral tattoo brings together his “two known subject areas, ethnological drawings and botanicals”. Anyone clued up on their history of botany will notice that Le Moyne includes in his floral design species which were newly introduced to Western Europe at the time, and so rendering the woman in the picture slightly anachronistic.

No basis in reality, but a beautiful image. Via The Public Domain.

Victorian London’s Dirty Book Trade.

19th-century “French postcard” from the personal collection of the German-Austrian psychiatrist and early sexologist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing — Source.

Title page to an 1891 edition of The Story of a Dildoe! — Source. The full book is available, in English.

The Public Domain has a fascinating article on Holywell Street, home of the Victorian porn trade. There’s much to see, and read.

Victorian sexuality is often considered synonymous with prudishness, conjuring images of covered-up piano legs and dark ankle-length skirts. Historian Matthew Green uncovers a quite different scene in the sordid story of Holywell St, 19th-century London’s epicentre of erotica and smut.

(Tentative warning: the essay includes some mildly explicit content, both text and image, which may not be suitable for all ages and dispositions!)*

*Having read the article, there’s some very explicit language, not all of it nice. If you’re sensitive to that sort of thing, have a care. And there are a host of pictures, lots of nudity.

Via The Public Domain.