“Bouquets, wreaths, garlands and flower arrangements”. Antique book, Russia 1900.
This blog is about old postcards, book illustration and all kinds of paper whimsy from the Soviet Union. I'm a long time collector, and this blog is 7 years old. I have an etsy shop for cards, books, pins and vintage finds from Russia.
Antique Russian books:
Nightingale by N. Vuchetich, illustrated by V. Spassky and N. Kuznetsov (1913)
Lullabies, illustrated by A. Lozhkin (1910s)
“Bullfinch” illustrated by A. Neruchev (1917)
«Пряженчики пирожки» (Pierogi) illustrated by D. Shokhin, published in 1900s.
Interesting word - пряженчики - I didn’t know it before. Apparently it means pierogi fried in oil as opposed to baked. Now we just call those жареные пирожки (fried pierogi).
M. Platen “New Method of Treatment” (1906)
“Mushroom Picker” by D. Kaigorodov, 1891
“How Pavlik and Netochka Misbehaved” by Raisa Kudasheva, illustrated by A. Lozhkin (1910)
Alexey Gan “Constructivism” (book published in 1920)
“Small Butterfly Atlas for Amateur Collectors” by F. Berge, published in St Petersburg in 1913
Botanical Atlas by K. Hofmann, published in St Petersburg in 1897
Cacti illustration from “Indoor Gardening” by M. Hesdoerfer. Published in St Petersburg in 1898.
Hans Christian Andersen books published in Russia in 1894-1895
“Mushroom Picker”, a Russian pocket book published in 1903.
In my line of work, I get to go through a lot of books every day. Most of them I load off in the local library: endless classical works; books found in every Soviet house that nobody ever read; obsolete novelists; war memoirs etc. But sometimes, sometimes there is a GEM. And this one here is by far the biggest I’ve ever found.
I almost tremble when I touch it! Albeit the poor condition, it’s still magic.
So, let me show you this awesome book of fairy tales by Kornei Chukovsky with illustrations by none other then Vladimir Konashevich. Published in 1935. It has seven full-color plates that even feel different to the touch (almost like they’re real paintings, not prints).
It’s a very rare edition and I should probably stop touching it, but it’s so lovely and amazing! Oh, also fun to find little bits of old grammar, like итти, танцовать.