The Art of Instruction: Vintage Educational Charts from the 19th and 20th Centuries
4.5/5
()
About this ebook
Katrien Van der Schueren
Katrien Van der Schueren has been collecting educational charts for over a decade. She is the owner of voila! Gallery in Los Angeles.
Related to The Art of Instruction
Related ebooks
Flowers, Butterflies and Insects: All 154 Engravings from "Erucarum Ortus" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Botanical Art from the Golden Age of Scientific Discovery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Animal Illustration: The Essential Reference Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Art Nouveau: The Essential Reference Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/52,286 Traditional Stencil Designs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/53,800 Early Advertising Cuts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Art Nouveau Ornamentation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsErnst Haeckel's Art Forms in Nature: A Visual Masterpiece of the Natural World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVintage Ephemera: From the Collection of Cavallini & Co. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5376 Decorative Allover Patterns from Historic Tilework and Textiles Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Borders, Frames and Decorative Motifs from the 1862 Derriey Typographic Catalog Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Botanical Illustration: The Essential Reference Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Art Forms in Nature Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Big Book of Plant and Flower Illustrations Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Plants and Flowers: 1761 Illustrations for Artists and Designers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Besler's Book of Flowers and Plants: 73 Full-Color Plates from Hortus Eystettensis, 1613 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Language of Flowers - Illustrated by Kate Greenaway Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Exotic Flowers for Artists and Craftspeople Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Redouté's Fabulous Flowers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Floriography: An Illustrated Guide to the Victorian Language of Flowers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heck's Pictorial Archive of Nature and Science: With Over 5,500 Illustrations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Flower Book - Illustrated by Maxwell Armfield Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/51001 Floral Motifs and Ornaments for Artists and Craftspeople Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Art Nouveau Frames and Borders Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wildflower Designs and Motifs for Artists and Craftspeople Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Traditional Floral Designs and Motifs for Artists and Craftspeople Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Floral Designs and Motifs for Artists, Needleworkers and Craftspeople Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Artistic Plants and Flowers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Art For You
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Complete Papyrus of Ani Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Shape of Ideas: An Illustrated Exploration of Creativity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Designer's Dictionary of Color Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5And The Mountains Echoed Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Draw Like an Artist: 100 Flowers and Plants Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Art 101: From Vincent van Gogh to Andy Warhol, Key People, Ideas, and Moments in the History of Art Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Draw and Paint Anatomy, All New 2nd Edition: Creating Lifelike Humans and Realistic Animals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Botanical Drawing: A Step-By-Step Guide to Drawing Flowers, Vegetables, Fruit and Other Plant Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not My Father's Son: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Creative, Inc.: The Ultimate Guide to Running a Successful Freelance Business Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Drawing School: Fundamentals for the Beginner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Make Your Art No Matter What: Moving Beyond Creative Hurdles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World Needs Your Art: Casual Magic to Unlock Your Creativity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Electric State Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anatomy for Fantasy Artists: An Essential Guide to Creating Action Figures & Fantastical Forms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Find Your Artistic Voice: The Essential Guide to Working Your Creative Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Art of Instruction
12 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Art of Instruction - Katrien Van der Schueren
THE ART OF INSTRUCTION:
Vintage Educational Charts from the 19th and 20th Centuries
Introduction by Katrien Van der Schueren
Introduction and compilation copyright © 2011 by
Katrien Van der Schueren.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form without written permission from the publisher.
Page 155 constitutes as a continuation of the copyright page.
The Library of Congress has cataloguing data available.
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2851-1
Design by Sara Schneider
Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com
Contents
Introduction 6
Botany 9
Zoology 81
Appendix 142
Credits 155
Bibliography 155
References 155
Author Biography 156
Acknowledgments 156
plate 1 Dog Rose
Introduction:
There are objects from the past that can tell a story greater than what they were originally designed to do. One such relic is the illustrated wall chart from the late 1800s and 1900s, which was created as a practical classroom aid and is now treasured for its artistic merit. Profoundly elegant and beautiful, these charts are a window into the intersecting histories of education, science, and art.
The first educational wall charts were likely printed in Germany around 1820, when compulsory schooling began to spread throughout Europe and classroom size increased. The continent was facing the Industrial Revolution, rapid population growth, and a new perspective on education: learning as a fundamental human right. Governments saw it as their duty to mandate schooling, and this shift created a sustained and thriving market for the illustrated charts. Early visually aided instruction methods, such as passing around loose engravings or picture books, became inadequate. Giant-size images visible from anywhere within a crowded classroom offered an ideal solution.
With the invention of lithography in 1798, printers were able to produce large-scale images at an affordable price. Soon after, further technological innovations introduced chromolithography and enabled industrial-scale mass reproduction. As production speed, printing quality, color range, and price points improved, the pictorial charts gained in popularity. First introduced at the primary-school level, they quickly became the didactic aid par excellence for teaching a variety of subjects—botany, human anatomy, zoology, and ecology among them—at all grade levels.
Wall charts were regularly advertised by printers in magazines for educators. As a large-scale (roughly 35 × 50 inches each), easy-to-store, and affordable medium, they were welcomed with rave reviews by the scholastic community. Governments began to recognize the charts’ value in the classroom, and in many instances either subsidized production or wholly financed their acquisition for schools. The industry quickly became an intensive trade across Europe, with Germany as the market leader. At the peak of their popularity, roughly between 1870 and 1920, wall charts were translated into several languages and sold and distributed throughout the world, often with accompanying textbooks.
The size, vibrant color, and rich detail of these illustrated charts not only made them an ideal medium for teaching classifications in nearly all branches of biology, but these characteristics also lent them an aesthetic quality. The charts served a dual role, as both scientific tools and works of art. Responsible for the investigation of classroom decor and imagery, French commissioner Charles Bigot reported in the 1880s:
It is not enough to teach design in schools: we must still make the school itself a museum, a kind of sanctuary where there is beauty as well as science and virtue. Let the child live, surrounded by noble works that constantly speak to him, arousing his curiosity, raise his soul. . . . Art must come to him from almost all sides as the air he breathes.1
When charts on specific subjects were lacking, or when charts in general weren’t readily available, some schoolteachers would create their own hand-drawn versions. University professors and eminent scientists would also make their own wall charts to illustrate their scholarly discoveries, working closely