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Specimens of Fancy Turning
Browse more Fine Art Prints
Images from Specimens of Fancy Turning (1869), an early photography book featuring thirty tipped-in albumen silver prints of geometric designs created on “the hand or foot lathe”. Resembling something between spirograph drawings and textbook diagrams of orbiting electrons, the figures were created using geometric, oval, and eccentric chucks and an elliptical cutting frame. Attributed to “an amateur”, the book is credited by the Philadelphia Museum of Art as the work of Edward J. Woolsey (1803–1872), an heir of the mercantile Woolsey family and partner in the New York Patent Sugar Refinery.
- Groom in the Greek Style Ennemond Alexandre Petitot
- Basil Thyme, Poppy Anemone, and Myrtle Joris Hoefnagel
- Chinese Bird Design Albert Racinet
- Night Bombshells: 89 Hirayama Fireworks Co.
- Egyptian Albert Racinet
- Guide for Constructing the Letter C Joris Hoefnagel
- Geometria et Perspectiva: X Lorenz Stoer
- Medlar, Poppy Anemone, and Pear Joris Hoefnagel