Customer Reviews

Pictorial Webster's: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the 1940s I attended a country school with a single teacher and 20 kids ranging from first to eighth grade. During the last four years, I was the only kid in my "class" and was permitted (encouraged?) to do a great deal of independent reading.

Once a week the county superintendent would send around a circulating box of books, and I would often read and report on ten to twenty books a week. These reports were sent to Jefferson, the county seat, and if the superintendent approved, he would send back a certificate with a gold star for each book read, a total of 12 to each certificate. During my most productive year, I read and reported on 365 books, and received 30 certificates filled with stars, and a letter of commendation containing the five extra stars.

My teacher had me sit right next to the "New International Dictionary", which contained over three thousand pages and had a much shorter "History" with chronologies of various events from different countries. I loved checking the meaning of new words, and often just paged through both books, usually looking at the pictures first, then picking one word and listing all the meanings in a journal I kept for the purpose.

I've still got several of those early journals and I see that I made a few crude drawings based on the pictures in the dictionary. The words have become a part of my vocabulary but the pictures lived on in my imagination, many of them with a life of their own.

I was absolutely delighted to find this wonderful book of images. Some of them are a bit fuzzy and unclear, but the pages of the big dictionary were printed on a very thin paper and coal dust from the school's furnace smeared the pages and many of the images. Paging through this volume brings back many memories, even a sense of actually being back there in Joeville Country School.

This book contains so many personal meanings I'm not sure how to recommend it to others. I'm pretty sure others will find looking through the images will be a fascinating journey of discovery. It was for me many years ago, and still is today.

Robert C. Ross 2009

I purchased originally for my dad... but when it arrived my wife and I got it and realized THIS was a book we could gift to EVERYONE...the boss, the inlaws, grandma, families with kids who can't read... you can't go wrong. Pictorial Websters "tells the story" of times gone by via pictures--it's cool to flip the pages and explore! Then we searched and found the matching stamp set (for my wife's scrap-booking friends) and the Flash Cards (for our friends with kids) and now the holiday shopping is complete! Very cool idea that is timeless!

The book is called a Dictionary of Curiosities, but when I think of it, I call it a Dictionary of Visual Poetry; Every page represents an endless possibility for simultaneously forming visual, verbal, and sensory connections between the images themselves, the external and internal universe of the viewer, and the flow of time. The most prominent force behind the book is love. The evidence of the incredible love and respect towards each tiny image is fully evident in every gorgeously printed line, in the intricate labeling and positioning of the pictures and a prominent space each picture has on the page. These engravings could not have found a more skilled, masterful and knowledgeable person to work with them than the creator of the book. The second force is the combination of the intellectual integrity and universal accessibility which places this book in a unique realm where it can be read on every conceivable level of ability, academic erudition, historical knowledge, artistic prominence, and appreciation for the beautiful and the wonderful. The contents of the book infiltrate one's imagination, ask and answer questions, make connections, teach and inspire.
When I hold this book in my hand, I feel like it's a miracle child of commitment, hard work, luck, providence and love. It is a special, special collection of pages.

Dictionaries use a style of illustrations that all of us immediately recognize. These drawings were designed to illustrate words in the dictionary and were designed to convey information to the reader by assisting in the description of the word.

The illustrations in this book came from the original engravings that had been given to Yale University by the Merriam-Webster Company. Mr. Carrera has cleaned and restored the more than 1500 engravings and now presents them in the form of a bound book.

The result is a fascinating book that presents something that can be viewed as a historical link to our past, or simply as art in its own right. It's a book that you pick up and flip through the pages until you realize that you've spent an hour or two just looking, with perhaps just a bit of learning.

I remember leafing through an inches-thick dictionary years ago, and wishing there was some kind of extract with just the animal pictures. Lo and behold, here it comes! This book contains not just the animals, of course, but most of the illustrated entries (just picture and caption) of the original Webster's. You can even compare how certain visual concepts changed over the years, as sometimes the illustration for the same entry from different editions are included. Sure to delight all ages, especially those drawn to older graphic arts - try a guessing game where the caption is covered up and the subject of the picture needs to be identified.

The heart of the book is the engrvings, all carefully arranged on each page with scholarly notation of source, type, etc. The range of pictures, the details, make this a truly great book to look through,

However, don't just look at the engravings. Major joys of this book are the preface and the artist's introduction--some of his thoughts about how to enjoy the book. In the Pancreas (others might have called this the appendix) there is a wealth of information about how the wood blocks are made, the history of publication of the various editions of the dictionaary with pictures, the role of G. and C. Merriam, and the author's thoughts about creativity, thought, the brain, and what one can enjoy in looking and thinking about the wonderful pictures in this extraordnary book.

Katharine Waldmann

This is an amazing project from an artistic genius. I suggest getting a copy of the letterpress edition in a leather binding for your collection as well!

This is an unimaginably rich treasure trove that you will treasure for its richness. I know I'll be spending alot of time poring over it, giggling, maybe even "tearing-up" a bit at the marvelously poetic visual juxtapositions. Get an extra one to give to a friend. I did.

This is a beautifully put together book, with entertaining and fascinating images. I greatly enjoy it -- even my children are asking for the "curious dictionary" before bed time.

I found this great link that gives a bit of an overview of the project: [...]

This is an amazing book! A stunning work of art? To me, it's a representation of creative genius. Five stars easily. I'd give it six if I could. This is better than a course in American and world history, and ten times as interesting! An exceptional gift for the person who thinks they have seen it all, thinks they know it all, or someone who wants to see it all. The design of the book also fuels the deeper content by forcing the images on the small pages to engage in dialogue. For that alone this would be an incredible achievement. The world class engravings from the original Webster plates are incredible. Thousands of the best engravings ever produced.