favorite animated movies » Tekkonkinkreet (2006)
↳ “What is it about fire? So calm and peaceful but… inside, all power and destruction. It’s hiding something. Just like people do. Sometimes you have to get close to find what’s inside. Sometimes you have to get burned to see the truth.”
an old piece, posting anyways
Also, my apologies for all the message I haven’t answered yet, I’m terrible but I will reply!
William Sharp, one of the first chromolithographic printers in the U.S., created these extraordinary illustrations for the large folio Victoria Regia (1854) by John Fisk Allen. Allen, a well-known horticulturalist, cultivated a specimen of the rare, huge (up to 8 feet in diameter), fast-growing (up to an inch an hour!) water lily, native to the Amazon. After months of careful tending, the plant—named in honor of the recently-crowned Queen Victoria—blossomed on the evening of July 21, 1853. Sharp’s depictions of this exotic wonder—in various stages of bloom—were masterpieces and elevated the then-nascent art of chromolithography to spectacular new heights.
image captions: All images are from a copy of Victoria Regia in our collections. Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
(Source: april-liu)
Celestial Themes
