public domain images

From wikimedia commons:the PD-Art (Yorck Project).10,485 art images. Se more about The Yorck Project

Coloring pages
Charming vintage images; and yes they can be used for coloring too but I can see other uses for them.

The Civil War, the WEB's most extensive source of original Civil War resources. This site has over 7,000 pages of original Civil War content, and is full of incredible photographs, original illustrations, and eye-witness accounts of the defining moments of this Historic Struggle. A collection of Harper's Weekly.

Smithsonian Institutions Libraries, the Trade Literature collection; one of the largest

collections of American industry catalogs and related literature in the world.Trade catalogs are printed materials published by manufacturing, wholesaling, or retailing firms.


Missouri Valley Special Collections: among many other interesting ones, some picturesque Victorian advertising cards.

Vintage plant images in MBG Library Rare Books. If you're a sucker for old plant representations like I am, you'll love these collections.

University of Georgia, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, The Paris Music Hall Collection. The collection comprises over 6,000 original renderings of costume designs and 1,000 original renderings of curtain designs for the music halls of Paris from 1920-1938.

Digital Librarian: a librarian's choice of the best of the Web. Huge link collection, a great taste of it. Very warm thanks to the person on the other side of the screen. I'm thinking at the amount of the work and passion involved in this and I'm very grateful to him/her.


NYPL Digital gallery provides free and open access to over 700,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more. You can download medium size images (wonderful graphics and photos, I'm amazed by the resolution early photographers achieved, not to talk about the light, in an era we tend to consider as early technology) or pay for hi-res ones.

Public domain images resources; collection of links of collection of links or a master list of places on the web where you can access public domain images as they describes it. The above NYPL link is one of them.Also Earth Observatory (NASA), Human Anatomy, American Political History, and many others ov great interest.

From Old Books is just about this: wonderful graphics from old books (fallen inlove with these). Over 1800 images scanned from out of copyright books owned by the site creator. Well organized, searchable, and easy to download images of different sizes.

John Leech Sketch archives from Punch; an online archive already containing over 600 chosen cartoons of his from Punch over the 1841-1864 period.

Public domain book illustrations, a set on flickr.826 images scanned from an owner of a house full of books.

U.S.History Images. Settlement and colonies, Life in the colonies, Colonial patriots, Native americans, Age of discovery, The vikings, Spanish explorers, English explorers and more. Also from an owner of a huge home library.

From the same house library, Karen's Whimsy public domain images on different themes. Some of them: animal life, botanical, Cristian images, angels, fantasy worlds, coloring pages (from vintage children books), paper crafts, vintage fashion, and many many more. The amount of work involved is amazing.

On deviant art, many sets of photoshop brushes made by using old books images.Remittance girl has a great collection and made also a Beginner’s Photoshop Brush Tutorial and an Aged Document Tutorial.


Internet Archive text archive; over 1,606,871 items and this means texts or musical sheets. If you browse with patience you can find old illustrations but also blank old page, to use as textures in your work.


Biodiversity Heritage Library: 14,840 titles, 39,325 volumes, 15,936,427 pages. You can browse in the cloud of tags.


Turning the pages, the British Library. First Atlas of Europe Compiled by Mercator in the 1570s;Classic of Botanical Illustration, Elizabeth Blackwell's remarkable Herbal; Turn the pages of Vesalius' Anatomy A Landmark in Medical History
Vesalius's stunning 16th-century anatomy; Turn the pages of Alice Under Ground The Original Alice Written and illustrated by Lewis Carroll. Just some titles.


Old Fine Art: Scanned Antique Books and Postcards . A Midsummer-night's dream, illustrated by Arthur Rackham; Postcards with beauties; Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, illustrated by Edmund Dulac.


The Fitzwilliam Museum; browse the collections of Antiquities, Applied Arts, Manuscripts & Printed Books , Coins and Medals , Paintings Drawing and Prints, Conservation.

Depression Press' photostream is an account on flickr with a large collection of typecase, graphic and illustrations. Interesting retro logos and I think he has also a print shop for anyone interested.

Just another word: I think anybody who browse trough these collections should have a thought of gratitude for those who made this fabulous journey possible. The creators of the images we see now and those who scanned and uploaded, resized, tagged and worked on the sites. This is a huge work and we should understand it. Also check for a possible copyright. Every site has its terms of use which must be taken very seriously. Even if in public domain, the images owner could claim that they should be used in personal or educational purposes and not commercial. Read carefully before using.

Enjoy at least as much as I enjoyed myself trough these!!