Smith's Illustrated Astronomy, 1849-1850
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ARRR! Talk Like Pirate Day is September 19!
Bringing Her Yards Aportland, Tackles to the Gooseneck of the Tiller, Sheer Off, Running His Guns, Setting Fire to the Powder, Raising Their Metal, Bringing Her on the Careen.
These are terms most of us do not hear very often, or are unfamiliar with, but to ship’s captains and crew during the Age of Sail, all of these were well understood.
Acts of piracy on the high seas had been common from the time people first took to the sea, but for most of us today, the word Pirate conjures up images of 18th-century buccaneers made popular in art, books, and movies. Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, Captain William Kidd, Stede Bonnet, Anne Bonny, “Calico Jack” Rackham, Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts, and Samuel “Black Sam” Bellamy are just a few of the men and women who “Went on the Account,” that is, turned to piracy.
This book, The Lives and Bloody Exploits of the Most Noted Pirates, Their Trials and Executions, published by Ezra Strong in 1839, describes the lives and careers of many of these pirate captains in colorful detail.
Perhaps the following speech, included in this book, (pages 129 and 130) and attributed to pirate Captain “Black Sam” Bellamy, gives us an insight into the reason why so many seafaring men, during the Age of Sail, chose to became pirates. Captain Bellamy, commanding the Wydah Galley, captured and plundered a sloop commanded by a Captain Beer while cruising off Rhode Island in late February of 1717. Captain Bellamy to Captain Beer:
I am sorry they [Bellamy’s crew] won’t let you have your sloop again, for I scorn to do any one a mischief when it is not for my advantage; - the sloop, we must sink her, and she might be of use to you. Though you are a sneaking puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security; for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get by knavery; but-ye altogether:-them for a pack of crafty rascals, and you, who serve them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numskulls. They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference, they rob the poor under the cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage. Had you not better make one of us, than sneak after these villains of employment?
Captain Beer rejected throwing in with the pirates.
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Fritz Eichenberg (German/American 1901-1990)
A selection of his wood engraving illustrations for Tales of Edgar Allan Poe - Random House - published in 1944
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
A Descent into the Maelström
Fall of the House of Usher
The Gold Bug
The Masque of the Red Death
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Sphinx
The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade
Mellonta Tauta
The Imp of the Perverse
The Tell-Tale Heart
Vignette for Part I
Vignette for Part II
Vignette for Part III
Vignette for Part IV
Vignette for Part V
Vignette for Part VI
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TRONIE ALONIE
“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness. She says and does horrid things, and you see only charm.” —Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata
I thought it would be fun to take “it” “up a level” and draw a “tronie” (Dutch for face, “Pearl Girl” is one of these) based on an AI-generated image…
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Wood Engraving Wednesday
LAWRENCE KEATY
In this wood engraving entitled Taipei, American artist Lawrence Keaty (b. 1986) offers us a vision of the city he was born in and where he lived when he made this print in 2020. The print is made from six separate blocks and together measure 65cm x 35cm (25.5" x 14"). The print was selected by my Wisconsin colleagues Tracy Honn and Jim Moran for inclusion in the Fourth Triennial Exhibition 2020-2022 of the American American wood engravers society, the Wood Engravers’ Network (WEN). This image is from the catalog for that travelling show.
Lawrence Keaty received a BA from Kenyon College with a major in Studio Art and he earned his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2010. He taught English in Taiwan and South Korea from 2011 to 2019 and then worked as a writer/editor for Global Village Organization in Taipei for a year before returning to the U.S. (New Mexico) where he currently works as a UX/UI designer as well as a professional artist.
View other posts with engravings from the WEN Fourth Triennial Exhibition.
View more engravings by members of the Wood Engraver’s Network.
View more posts with wood engravings!
– MAX, Head, Special Collections and juror for the WEN Fifth Triennial Exhibition.
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