Quarles Emblems
Francis Quarles ‘Emblems’ is a book of moral and religious verse first published in 1635. To be honest, the text content of the book is enought to send anyone to sleep (imo), but if you are into that kind of thing you might find it interesting. The real interesting thing about this book is its illustrative history. The original was pictured by, amongst others, William Marshall with a series of grotesque engravings. There have been many subsequent editions of the book but the one of real interest to us is the 1886 edition, illustrated by W H Rogers and C H Bennet. The style of these drawings is light years ahead of time in my opinion. They are interesting, and quirky whilst being mildly disturbing – excellent qualities for illustrative work! Take a look (click thumbnails for full size):
The page scan of this book can be downloaded at the internet archive and the good thing about their scans is that they are done at 300dpi so if you have photoshop you can extract the images from the book at this resolution. There are 79 full page images so it would take a while to do this but worth it. Luckily for you I have already done it! Download a zip file of the lot HERE.
Quarles is yet another example of a public domain resource that you can take and use for profit. For example, I think these emblems would look amazing on a t-shirt. If you have a store at Zazzle or Cafe Press you could make a highly original product with these (a problem on those sites as you get a lot of t-shirts etc with the same images but I cant see many people having these!). You could keep the images as they are or if you are any good at photoshop etc you can fool around with them to come up with some funky/original design. Heres my rather bad attempt) just done quickly to give you a general idea):
Hope you enjoyed the post. If anyone who has “$50 A Day Auction Challenge” would be interested in some instruction / video on how to get these max res images out of a pdf with photoshop just leave a comment and I will add it to the download area if theres any demand.
This is a great find, Steve. As soon as I saw them I thought they would make great designs for t-shirts. I’m sure they’d appeal to heavy metal kids, and maybe horror movie fans as well.
I look forward to seeing what you unearth next.
Regards
Lynn
http://www.onlineauctionideas.com
Hi Steve,
thanks for sharing,they are bizarre but I like them they are different… Is it possible selling just the illustrations on e-bay?
I not sure if you are already doing that? There is “Illustrations on DVD”, making prints that are matted, also doing the T-shirt thing. Wow you open my mind after reading your book. A week or so I never even would of though of doing any of that…I want to thank you so much for sharing… Love to hear from you on your thoughts of how they could me marketed…
Reg B.
Hi Steve, have enjoyed your great ebook, now your blog. Would love the extra instruction on photoshop techniques.
Hey Steve,
I would be very interested in getting some instruction/video on how to get the Quarles images out of a pdf with photoshop.
I have seen some of the Quarles Emblems previously and find them fascinating.
The $50 a day challenge ebook is excellent by the way. Well done.
I’m still working my way through it and am looking forward to getting a new eBay site set up.
I may have a question or two for you regarding eBay in a couple of days time if you don’t mind.
Cheers,
Michael
Yes Steve I would like the video on mating these…
Thanks
Reg B.
Hi Steve, brilliant images as always. These are particularly spectacular!
Enjoy the journey.,
Mandy
Interesting blog. It would be great if you can provide more details about it. Thanks a lot!
Great to see you active on your blog again, Steven.
To my mind, your “$50 A Day With Public Domain” is absolutely the best value for money on the entire WWW.
Best Regards.
– Sidney Allinson,
Victoria, British Columbia,
Canada.
http://www.warwriting.blogspot.com
http://www.bantamsoldiers.com