Resources in Art and Architecture on the Web

Blog about "blooks," objects made in emulation of books.

Sixteen scrapbooks, containing close to 10,000 wood-engravings by 19th-century master illustrator Alexander Anderson. From NYPL.

Contemporary works by a variety of artists.

Collection of 100 artist's books from the Walker Art Center filmed to demonstrate how they move.

Selections of non-copyrighted papers in the collection of Texas A&M University Libraries.

Digitized book bindings from 1100-1875. Wikimedia site.

Online exhibition from Columbia University Libraries.

Available through JSTOR.

Late 19th and early 20th century children's books, featuring picture books from Cincinnati publisher Peter G. Thomson.

Digitized books and more.

Blog post outlining the terminology of decorated paper, with illustrations.

Fortunato Depero's 1927 work of graphic design and bookmaking.

Site dedicated to "books that inspire creativity, innovation, and invention."

Compilation of collections of artist's books, primarily in the U.S. and Canada, with links.

Beautiful bindings from the museum's collections.

144 full text scans -- site is in Russian.

Rare 18th century bindings from the library of George Washington. From Boston Athenaeum.

Early print books from JSTOR.

Online exhibition from Columbia University Libraries.

Consists of approximately 330 nineteenth- to twentieth-century Arabic lithograph printed books, mostly published in Iran and India. From University of Chicago.

Over 650 18th and 19th century books from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Thomas J. Watson Library Digital Collections.

From the University of North Carolina at

Online exhibition from Columbia University Libraries.

Contains over 900 English-language chapbooks published in England, Scotland, Ireland and the northeastern United States in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Older website with images of covers.

Online exhibition from the University of Cambridge.

Searchable by creator, language, date. and more.

From the Boston Athenaeum.

"The collection highlights a range of publishers’ bindings as well as endpapers, bookplates, signatures, notes, and other details that provide evidence of a book's manufacture, ownership, and use over time."

Blog featuring classic pulp novel covers.

"The "Rare Book Room" site has been constructed as an educational site intended to allow the visitor to examine and read some of the great books of the world."

Crowdsourced collection of original covers for great books in the public domain.

Blog "[showcasing] some of the more spectacular, interesting, and puzzling items we come across."

Highlights books from RISD's Special Collections Library. Available through JSTOR.

Collection from the Walker Art Center.

Over 300 bookplates designed by Smith (1845-1929). From Boston Athenaeum.

Artist's books from the early 20th century to today.

Searchable collection from the library.

"A broad sampling of cover images from popular literature, including dime novels, pulp magazines, books in series for juveniles, fashion and homemaking magazines, comics, science fiction and adventure stories"

Created by and for Professor Evelyn Lincoln and her students, this site contains images from printed books and other material published in the 16th through the 18th centuries about the city of Rome.

"View 253 digitised Renaissance festival books (selected from over 2,000 in the British Library's collection) that describe the magnificent festivals and ceremonies that took place in Europe between 1475 and 1700."

Online exhibition from Columbia University Libraries.

"This collection of books represents the earliest depictions of the Ainu by the Japanese... [They] are either hand-written, with illustrations hand-drawn, or are wood block prints."

"An illustrated, descriptive index to the Artists' Book Collection, located in the Kohler Art Library...The database indexes nearly 1200 of those titles, most of which have one to four images to visually represent the structure and/or content of the book."

"Cartoneras or cartonera publishers are small independent publishing houses created on a not-for-profit basis... Their books are hand-made from recycled cardboard."

"This project increases the awareness of the general public about the importance of publishers' bindings as reflections of historical events, art movements, and the evolution of commercial binderies."

From the library collections.

"Fifteen titles of Edo-period (1600-1868) Japanese woodblock-printed books are included in this online collection. The books are predominantly pictorial, with illustrations designed by artists such as Nishikawa Sukenobu, Katsushika Hokusai, Kono Bairei and Ando Hiroshige."

Online exhibition from Princeton University Library.

Providence Public Library site featuring historical portrait prints of printers and booksellers.

"The collection contains Art Nouveau designs for books and publications by Talwin Morris (1865-1911)."

Search interface for the collections.

Includes over 800 limited edition books, dating from 1929 to the present. From Nashville Public Library.