kottke.org posts about Nicholas Rougeux
Nicholas Rougeux, whose work I have featured here before, has published a complete digital edition of William Jardine’s 40-volume book series on natural history published in the early-to-mid 19th-century. As part of the project, Rougeux restored each of the more than 1300 illustrations in the library, and the results are fantastic.
Rougeux wrote a post on the history of The Naturalist’s Library and how the project came about.
The Library is credited with having a significant democratizing effect on the study of natural history because Jardine and Lizars prioritized affordability and portability. Each book was only 4 by 6 inches and priced at six shillings, making them a much more accessible alternative to the “unwieldy folios” from other naturalists. This led to a tremendous demand for each one, resulting in tens of thousands of copies being printed overall. Just two years into publication, a notice appears at the beginning of one volume stating, “we have sold upwards of 60,000 volumes, in which there have been nearly 2,400,000 coloured plates given as Illustration.” Exact sales numbers are difficult to come by but history has shown that the series was very popular with estimates of 10,000 copies sold for each volume, totaling at least 400,000.
In order to help with his research, he borrowed a biography of Jardine from the library and built a custom rig out of K’nex construction toy pieces to scan the whole thing.
About a month later, I discovered a 2001 biography about Jardine, Sir William Jardine: A Life in Natural History, which only existed as a physical copy. I emailed the publisher to ask for a digital copy but had no luck. So I did what any self-respecting researcher would do and borrowed it on an inter-library loan and made my own digital copy by building a very janky custom rig out of old K’nex parts to take pictures of each page with my phone that I later combined into a searchable PDF. The OCR on it could be improved but having it available digitally allowed me to consult it in my research.
You can check out the shop for posters of the illustrations as well as a complete, bound, 800-page volume of all 1300+ illustrations.
Wow, Nicholas Rougeux has restored John Gould’s A Monograph of the Trochilidæ, or Family of Humming-Birds, which was published between 1848 & 1887 and contains hand-colored lithographic depictions of almost every single hummingbird species known to exist at the time.
From Rougeux’s page about the project:
The monograph is considered one of the finest examples of ornithological illustration ever produced, as well as a scientific masterpiece. Gould’s passion for hummingbirds led him to travel to various parts of the world, such as North America, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, to observe and collect specimens. He also received many specimens from other naturalists and collectors.
The image at the top of the post is the gorgeous poster that Rougeux created from the drawings in Gould’s monograph…you can order some for your walls and read a making-of.
See also other projects by Rougeux that I’ve posted about.
Nicholas Rougeux designed a series of posters to visualize all 143 prime numbers with three digits based on simple rules.
Each print contains all 143 prime numbers with 3 digits. Each is represented by an image composed of simple geometric shapes based on its digital root and colors based on its digits. Arranging these images sequentially creates colorful collages of prime numbers based on simple rules.
For each poster, a unique shape was assigned to the digital root of each prime number which is calculated by iteratively summing its digits until one remains. (All known prime numbers greater than 3 have digital roots of 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, or 8.)
There are nine posters in all that use a few different styles of geometric shape.
Nicholas Rougeux has beautifully reproduced & remastered botanical illustrator Elizabeth Twining’s catalog of plants and flowers from 1868, Illustrations of the Natural Orders of Plants. Each of the 160 illustrations is accompanied by explanatory text from the original book and an interactive version of the image (click on the highlighted plant for more info).
Posters based on the illustrations are available and, get this, so are puzzles!
I love this zoomable interactive display of British & Exotic Mineralogy. To create it, Nicholas Rougeux collected 718 hand-drawn mineral illustrations by James Sowerby sourced from a pair of multi-volume books called British Mineralogy and Exotic Mineralogy, published between 1802 and 1817. Then he arranged them according to hue and brightness in a collage worthy of Knoll.
British Mineralogy and Exotic Mineralogy comprise 718 illustrations by James Sowerby in an effort to illustrate the topographical mineralogy of Great Britain and minerals not then known to it. Sowerby’s plates are some of the finest examples of hand-drawn mineral illustrations ever created. The detail and care with which these illustrations were created is incredible and worthy of close examination. See the samples below.
And, oh boy, he’s selling posters of it too.
Nicholas Rougeux, who describes himself as a “designer, data geek, fractal nut”, designed a process to turn musical scores into ultra-colorful images. He outlined his process here.
Rougeux also made video versions where you can see the visualizations form as the songs play. Here’s Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons:
Posters are available.
Nicholas Rougeux is building an approximation of a Menger sponge, a 3-D fractal shape with no volume and infinite surface area, out of Post-It notes.
It looks about 90% complete…but as a Menger sponge, can you ever really call it finished? (thx, zach)
Socials & More