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Plate VII. Human figures and bears, inside and out. Comparative anatomy as applied to the purposes of the artist. 1883. 

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I miss how active you once were, but I really hope life’s treating you well! Have any encouraging fictional books you’d recommend?

Oh I’m so sorry! I’ve been missing tumble as of late - hello again!

In the last year, I’ve really enjoyed “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig. I’m not sure how “encouraging” they are but I also really enjoyed “Mexican Gothic” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and the Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French :)

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Fayum Mummy Portraits, dating from around 30 BC to the mid 3rd century AD. 

The portrait heads were attached to Egyptian mummies of the Roman period, covering the faces of the deceased In the top pictures, you can see now they were bound to the mummy. Dating from the time of the Roman occupation of Egypt, they are closest to Graeco-Roman artistic traditions. Around 900 are known to survive and they are some of the only surviving evidence of Classical panel painting traditions. Due to their burial in hot, dry conditions with the bodies, many have survived in excellent condition. 

The term Fayum comes from an area of graveyards (necropoli) where they were found in large numbers, buried in communal catacombs. 

Painted on wooden board (and sometimes on cloth), either in encaustic (wax) or egg tempera. 

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Deer

鶴鹿図

Kano Yôsen'in Korenobu

latter half of the 18th century to first half of the 19th century

MEDIUM/TECHNIQUEHanging scroll; ink and color on silk

DIMENSIONSImage: 129 x 53 cm (50 13/16 x 20 7/8 in.)

CREDIT LINEWilliam Sturgis Bigelow Collection

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A weaver works on a carpet at a carpet workshop in Isfahan, Iran

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Rockford Common by Leigh Dorey

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Artist Knits Giant Blanket Celebrating Copenhagen’s Colorfully Distinct Architecture. 

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Currently Reading: Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

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Currently Reading: White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg

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An illustration of a wearied author celebrating the completion of his book, from the final page of  Henry Bristow’s A glossary of mineralogy (1861).

Full text available here.

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Frass: debris or excrement produced by insects.

This manuscript is part of the José Agusto Escoto collection of Cuban history and literature. The 1574 manuscript in a later binding had extensive beetle damage ​from its previous life in the Caribbean when it arrived at Harvard’s Weissman Preservation Center. There were such copious frass deposits that large sections of the 119 pages were stuck together, so much so that the text could not be read. Karen Walter, senior paper conservation technician, had a lot of work ahead of her.

The manuscript needed to be stabilized for digitization by disbinding, separating the fragile pages, re-attaching the fragments with media, and rehousing in Mylar sleeves.

It was the “separating” part of this task that worried Karen until, during disbinding, she realized that the frass was very brittle. She did a test using a Teflon tool to apply pressure through the paper on top of a small area of frass and was surprised when it crumbled away allowing her to slide a microspatula further between the two pages until it hit the next deposit. In the worst cases, this step was repeated dozens of times.

As a result, the pages were successfully separated with minimal loss of media revealing text which had been inaccessible for many years. And as a bonus, it turned out that crushing desiccated bug poop for days was a lot of fun!

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Currently Reading: Where You'll Find Me: Risk, Decisions, and the Last Climb of Kate Matrosova by Ty Gagne

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Currently Reading: Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t by Malcolm Gladwell

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https://www.instagram.com/p/BYUHsqRgTQz/?taken-by=amy_hs