Antique Prints, Maps, Illustrated Books, Vintage Magazines, Ephemera
Welcome to oldimprints.com galleries of historic original vintage graphics: Antique Prints (including vintage travel posters), Antique Maps (with early 20th century pictorial and bird's eye view maps), Collectible Books (illustrated and children's books a specialty), Vintage Magazines, & Paper Ephemera . ALL THE ITEMS LISTED ON OUR WEBSITE ARE ANTIQUE OR VINTAGE, AS DESCRIBED. We ship worldwide: please browse & bookmark this page!
***33% OFF SELECT ILLUSTRATED CHILDREN'S BOOKS AT OLDIMPRINTS.COM***
Just under 200 books are available at 1/3 off their original price in the SPECIALS section of our website (just click on the SPECIALS tab at top right of this page). Prices listed there are the regular price -
the discount will be taken off when we process the order. For instance the edition of Peter Pan illustrated here is available at $20 (reduced from $30). Please browse our illustrated listing!
As the Northern Hemisphere moves into autumn, thoughts turn to our homes and perhaps a new decorating theme... I have always been fascinated by different printing processes, and this month we feature a number of chromolithographs which represent the popular taste of late nineteenth century America (which has been dubbed the "chromo civilization").
View a selection of the chromos that graced Victorian parlors or
learn more about chromolithographs. For many other exquisite prints - mezzotints, engravings, etchings - shells, landscapes, fashion, botanicals and more - please click on the SPECIALS tab at top right of this page to view some of the vintage and antique prints recently added to the website.
The Sunset.
LANDSCAPE - HORIZONTAL)
RRP: $35.00
Chromolithograph, 7 1/2 x 21 1/2 inches on sheet 14 x 28 inches. Discoloration and some light soiling to margins, dampstaining to upper edge, 1/2 inch tear to upper left edge, image is clean and bright. This attractive print is identified as Sunset
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Below are selections from our Victorian natural history books.
Old English Wild Flowers to be Found by the Wayside, Fields, Hedgebrows, Rivers, Moorlands, Meadows, Mountains, and Sea-shore. Cover title: Old English Wild Flowers.
WILD FLOWERS) Burgess, J. T.
RRP: $125.00
8 color plates (color wood engravings), in-text black and white illustrations, all edges gilt, x+291pp, index, 6 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches, decorative gilt lettered cloth covered boards (hardbound). Wear to cover extremities, decorative owner nameplate on f
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We have a fun selection of pictorial maps used for purposes and in places a little out of the usual, and reflecting the intrinsic importance of maps to the human psyche: not only do we use them to provide directions, but to tell us, in ways big and small, about the world around us and how we relate to that world. Arbuckle Coffee trade cards were an advertising sensation at the end of the 1800s, included in packets of Arbuckle Coffee; there were many different sets issued, but two particularly popular sets were the 50 card sets of the United States and of foreign countries, both of which were also issued by the company in atlas form. We have examples of other unusual cartographic items: old sheet music from 1904, a vintage crate label and postcard from the 1950s, a Florida tablecloth (a mere hint at all the other cloth items on which maps appeared, including scarves and ties), menus and the cover of a World War I women's magazine with a mother and child poring over a map of the European Front. Take a look at
Carto-Maine-ia: Puzzles and Wraps and Oddball Maps a 1999 exhibition of similar items held at the Osher Map Library of the University of Maine, where you will find the exhortation to save and collect similar items. A sentiment we thoroughly endorse!
Collecting Paper Ephemera with Maps
If you're a map lover and haven't considered this type of cartographic publication, please read on!
In the spring 2007 issue of the Journal of the International Map Collectors' Society is an interesting article on the collecting of maps in ephemera (printed material intended to be transient in nature), "Ephemeral Maps?" by University of Texas at Arlington Professor Dennis Reinhartz. Pre 20th century folding maps have long been collected, but it is only recently that attention has grown in the area of collecting 20th century map ephemera, an area in which oldimprints.com specialises. Ironically, often regarded as common, cheap items, because they were meant to be used and discarded they are now often much harder to find than many 19th century atlas maps. Unlike atlas maps, which were part of a larger item, the travel brochures, railroad timetables, cruise line advertising booklets etc, which dominate the area of maps in ephemera, were issued as intrinsic entities with a purpose and character of their own, reflecting the attitudes and mores of the day and are thus an incredibly rich resource for the research of popular and political culture. Or just a lot of fun to look through! One way or another, I hope that you will enjoy our new listing of ephemera (mostly with maps, plus some interesting merchandise catalogs). You may wish to
sign up for one of our email notification of newly catalogued ephemera.
We are pleased to offer some uncommon and exquisitely printed antique botanical prints: stipple engravings from Thomas Knight's Pomona Herefordiensis (1811) which Sitwell in
Great Flower Books describes as "a cyder feast of all the local apples, described under their poetical old names, and beautifully drawn and coloured mostly by a lady amateur." View all these engravings in the Print Gallery list: Botanical: Fruit: Pomona Herefordiensis.
This pictorial map of Florida featured in the New York Times in February 2007 demonstrates the ongoing popular appeal of pictorial or pictographic maps; they are eyecatching, fun, easy to read and can be packed with information (in this case how snow birds tend to "settle in clumps" in Florida based on where they are coming from). Pictorial maps are one of our specialties, combining as the best of them do geographical and historical information with striking graphics - and making very clear a feature of all maps, often obscured, that the "facts" may be manipulated (a "must-read" book dealing with this topic is "How to Lie with Maps" by Mark Monmonier).
Take a look at our vintage pictorial maps of the United States including maps from "A Gay Geography" published in the mid 1930s. These are colorful and entertaining pictures of the economic and social life of each state by the talented and prolific illustrator Ruth Taylor White, albeit with a decidedly dated attitude (or so may be hoped) of racial stereotyping. Ruth Taylor White is probably best known for her cartographs of Hawaii, also in the style of the pictorial maps here, but also did pictorial maps in a more sophisticated style, such as her Wine Map of California and a pictorial map of the Philippine Islands.
