Modern reproduction of an 1868 catalog of flower illustrations

Nicholas Rougeux, who has a knack and the patience to recreate vintage works in a modern context, reproduced Elizabeth Twining’s Illustrations of the Natural Orders of Plants:

If someone told me when I was young that I would spend three months of my time tracing nineteenth century botanical illustrations and enjoy it, I would have scoffed, but that’s what I did to reproduce Elizabeth Twining’s Illustrations of the Natural Orders of Plants and I loved every minute.

The best part is that you can select flowers in the text or on the illustrations to focus on a specific parts, which makes descriptions easier to interpret.

Read more on Rougeux’s process here.

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Modern reproduction of 1847 geometry books

Euclid’s Elements is a series of 13 books produced in 300 BC that forms a collection of mathematician Euclid’s proofs and definitions. In 1847, Oliver Byrne recreated the first six books “in which coloured diagrams and symbols are used instead of letters for the greater ease of learners.” Nicholas Rougeux recreated Byrne’s work with an online interactive version:

This site was created to bring Byrne’s colorful edition to life by making it available to a modern audience by reproducing the entire book online so it would be accessible to anyone with modern equipment and a flexible design as true to the original as possible. Each diagram was created by tracing the originals and ensuring their dimensions and relationships stayed true to Euclid’s geometric principles. Proofs accompanying each diagram have been enhanced with clickable shapes to aid in understanding the shapes being referenced.

What glorious tedium. Read more on Rougeux’s process here. See also his previous recreation of the 1821 Nomenclature of Colours.

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Interactive recreation of an 1821 color guidebook

I’m always down for faux vintage, online recreations of actual vintage visualization-related things. Using scans from the real thing, Nicholas Rougeux recreated Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, supplementing with interaction and photo references.

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