Customer Reviews

Heck's Pictorial Archive of Nature and Science (Dover Pictorial Archive, Vol. 3)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book was a valuable resource when I designed a Biology-themed project. The images are well-rendered and the book scans well enough. The variety is good enough for the price, but for less desirable subjects such as fungi, ferns, and even some aspects of meteorology the depiction leaves something to be desired. However, (especially) for dicots, astronomy, anthropology, and ornithology, the drawings are superb.

This was an OK book...I planned to use it for altered books and art journals, and I'm afraid that the number of images (few) and the types of images (limited) kind of limit this book's usefulness. The thing I didn't like is, there are one, two, even three pages wit hthe same stuff on them. And it's not a bunch of little related images; it's a whole page out of some ancient book that doesn't look like it will lend itself very well to cutting and pasting this or that very particular image out of the whole scene.

If you're looking for many intricate images of the same thing (the human skeleton, for instance, or the mechanical plans of some old-fashioned machine) then this is for you. If you're looking for just 1 or 2 smaller images per topic but with many topics (like most of the other clip art books by this publisher) then you may not find this to be of much use to you.

Based on J.G. Heck's 'Bilder Atlas zum Conversation lexicon' published in Germany in the last century, the 'Iconographic Encyclopaedia of Science, Literature, and Art' was a monumental six-volume compilation of illustrations and information covering an enormous range of subjects, from architecture to zoology. Among its most remarkable features were the most 11,000 superb steel engravings, comprising one of the most extensive pictorial archives ever published in a single work.

The present book, one of three separate and independent volumes based on the rare original American edition of 1851, is devoted to nature and science. Over 170 beautifully reproduced plates contain thousands of illustrations depicting an extraordinary array of subjects: mathematical and geometrical problems, surveying instruments, astronomical maps and instruments, planetary systems according to Ptolemy, the Egyptian, Copernicus and others; positions of the planets, botanical illustrations of scores of plants - including seed pods, fruits and other parts; physical and meteorological illustrations demonstrating many laws and principles; numerous types of physical and chemical apparatus; animals, minerals, fossils, geological formations, human anatomy and many other images. A descriptive table of contents is keyed to numbered lllustrations on each plate.

I use this and similar styled illustration books as drawing references for texture versus form and also for historical portrayals of various subjects. So it's certainly suited my uses!