I wrote in recent post about acquiring public domain images from Wikimedia Commons and how to find them. Today, I wanted to show you a wonderful set of images I discovered taken from taken from Franz Meyer’s 1898 book ‘A Handbook of Ornament’.  This work reproduces nearly three thousand geometric and natural motifs used to decorate jewelry, furniture, manuscripts, vases and other articles dating from Greek civilization to the Victorian era.

You can find 121 full page plates free to download, reproduced on Wiki – take a look at some examples:

Click any of the images to see the full size,  full resolution images available on Wiki (opens in new window, click on image to max size). These stunning plates would make excellent prints which I am sure would have excellent resale value given the current popularity of the subject of ornamental design. Here are some thumbnail images from a colour page scan I found of the book – I think these look even better; I like the aged appearance of the page color better than the black and white images

As A guide to the popularity and marketability of this type of subject, its worth noting that Meyer’s ‘Ornament’ has, in recent years, been republished by Dover. If you dont know who Dover are, I advise you to go over to Amazon and do a search for ‘Dover Publications’. They are probably the prime example of a successful company built on the exploitation of public domain material. They were publishing books of vintage images (often accompanied by CD-Roms) and re-publishing vintage titles years before ‘public domain’ became buzz word on eBay and for internet marketers.

To see more vintage books on Historic Ornament, please click here.