Warner Bros. and Harper Collins have released a new book featuring the astounding original concept art for many of the creepy-crawly (and cute and fluffy) creatures from the books.
Harry Potter: The Creature Vault: The Creatures and Plants of the Harry Potter Films on Amazon via Pop Sugar.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the last year of the last known Passenger Pigeon known as Martha.
This marker inspired The Last Menagerie, a line of plates designed to commemorate, educate, and remind ourselves about that which is lost but not forgotten.The commemorative plate is such an odd and beautiful object. As it preserves and frames a fleeting moment or event–it also gives dimensional life to a wall.
The Last Menagerie is a collection of six commemorative plates each featuring a different extinct animal:
- The Dodo extinct since 1662
- Pyrenean Ibex extinct since 2000
- The Quagga extinct since 1883
- The Passenger Pigeon extinct since 1914
- Black African Rhino extinct since 2000
- The Wooly Mammoth extinct since the Pleistocene epoch
A healthy reminder, particularly the Black Rhino and Pyrenean Ibex, extinct only within the lifetime of anyone reading this.
Nicole Antebi on her Etsy page.
One Christmas when I decided to make a box of personalized miniature accessories for my grandparents— dollhouse hobbyists who had created beautiful dollhouses for themselves and all of their grandchildren.
I really think that the charm of a dollhouse lies in its attention to detail: the unexpected surprise of a pair of slippers by a bed, a bundle of love letters peeking out of a drawer, the birds’ nest tucked away high in the gables.
Oh, and did I mention…this is in 1″ scale? As in, the entire thing is less than a foot across.
Mind officially blown.
The work of L. Delaney. Available for purchase en toto on Etsy. Want to make your own? She has a kit for that as well…
We were unprepared for the sheer scale of the spider population and the extraordinary masses of both three dimensional and sheet-like webbing that blanketed much of the facility’s cavernous interior. Far greater in magnitude than any previously recorded aggregation of orb-weavers, the visual impact of the spectacle was nothing less than astonishing.
In places where the plant workers had swept aside the webbing to access equipment, the silk lay piled on the floor in rope-like clumps as thick as a fire hose.
Four acres of web found in 2009 at the Baltimore Wastewater Treatment Plant consisting of 107 million orb-weaver spiders of different species.
I am sensing a Spider-Man reboot based on this…
Photos by the Entomological Society of America.
Study authors Greene, Albert; Coddington, Jonathan A.; Breisch, Nancy L.; De Roche, Dana M.; Pagac, Benedict B. in American Entomologist, Volume 56, Number 3, Fall 2010 via ingentaconnect via Huffington Post, where you can see additional photos and information.
From 1514 or 1515, [Sebastian] Munster deepened and broadened his knowledge of mathematical geography and cartography. In 1524 he was appointed to teach the Hebrew language at the University of Heidelberg; this appointment was ill paid, and it was evidently with no reluctance that Munster accepted an invitation to the chair of Hebrew at the university of Basel, whither he moved in 1529 [and] was to spend the rest of his life until his death from plague in 1552.
Having completed the Geographia, Munster returned to his pet project, the description of Germany. In 1544, he published the first edition of the Cosmographia, a summary both of Munster’s own geographical researches and those of his many correspondents. For the 1550 edition additions included a large number of town prospects.
The 1550 edition of the Cosmographia was the final flowering of Munster’s work.
Supplementary photos via Wikipedia.
By Sebastian Münster in Cosmographia 1550 via Hominis Aevum.
Growing up in São Paulo in the 1990s, explosions were often my weekend alarm clock.
The strange succession of bursts and explosions, we knew, could only mean one thing: balloons.
The alarm clocks were easy to spot: balloons carrying enormous racks full of hundreds of fireworks of all sorts. They left huge trails of smoke in the sky, continuing their pyrotechnic displays sometimes for half an hour.
But it was not all explosions. Some balloons bore long paper banners with intricate designs ranging from abstract patterns to the likeness of musicians and celebrities, someone’s girlfriend or mother, or, on many occasions, Jesus Christ.
[T]he most beautiful were the ones that carried light panels: nets of candlelit paper lanterns in a multitude of colors, precisely arranged to form a drawing lit by fire in the night sky.
Some carried hundreds of kite-like paper gliders (released by a fuse) which would slowly flutter down all over a neighborhood.
These balloons are big. Big enough to carry people – but they don’t.
They’re not about transportation, but rather expressions of art. Paper balloons lifted by simple torches have been a part of Brazilian culture for centuries.
In the beginning they were small, only feet high, and often launched in conjunction with festivals celebrating the holy days of various Catholic saints known as festas juninas, or “June Festivals” (remember that Brazil, being in the Southern Hemisphere, is in winter in June).
Today, they’re more secular, even involving uniformed teams all working together to make bigger, better, more dramatic balloons to show off their creators’ skill.
In the 1990s, concerns about fire danger made launching and manufacturing of these balloons as federal crimes punishable by prison time, something that is still the case today.
Authorities continue to try to stamp out the interest and passion for the great balloons, but the renegade balloonists will not be stopped…and the balloons will fly.
Via The Appendix.
Bears, is a series of portraits of the most unusual sort: ordinary teddy bears that have been turned inside out and restuffed.
Each animal’s appearance is determined by the necessities of the manufacturing process.
Simple patterns and devices never meant to be seen are now prominent physical characteristics, giving each one a distinctly quirky personality: their fasteners become eyes, their seams become scars, and their stuffing creeps out in the most unexpected places.
Some fantastic fodder for a horror movie or three here.
Great. Now I am going to have nightmares about being trapped by clowns with only my army of inside-out teddy bears to defend me.
Via Kent Rogowski with tons more.