About

Codex xcix¹ s an occasionally updated weblog about the history of the visual arts and graphic design. Mostly this means books and their typography and illustration, maps, periodicals, photos and posters as well as other miscellaneous ephemera.

The history of visual arts is a rather wide swath to cover and the selection of materials follows the Stewartian argument of “I’ll know it when I see it.”²

The site is embellished wherever possible with diagrams, drawings, illustrations, maps, photographs, etc., and nearly all of the images in the posts link to a much larger image.

Specific subjects and their associated posts are more fully listed in the Archive.

Correspondence is most gratefully received. In fact, it gets your humble narrator about as giddy as a Victorian schoolgirl.

An ersatz RSS feed, as well as other site information, is available on Twitter.

C xcix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.³

1. Or Codex 99, Codex Ninety-Nine, or Codex XCIX. i.e.: Cod·ex n. A manuscript volume: e.g. one of the ancient manuscripts of the Scriptures. [L. cōdex, later spelling of caudex trunk of a tree, wooden tablet, book, code of laws.] + nine·ty n. The ninetieth of a set or series with numbered members; the one designated ninety. Usu. as number ninety, or with specification, as book ninety, chapter ninety, etc. + nine n. One more than eight as an abstract number; the figure or symbols representing this (9 in arabic numerals, ix, IX in roman). Or, put another way, nine·ty-nine = one less than one hundred (xcix, XCIX in roman). See: J.A. Simpson E.S.C. Weiner, ed. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 14 Sept 2005.

2. The quote is from Justice Potter Stewart’s opinion on Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964): “...I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it...” The case involved Nico Jacobellis, manager of a motion picture theater in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, who was convicted on two counts of possessing and exhibiting an obscene film, The Lovers (Les Amants. Louis Malle, Dir. Nouvelles Éditions de Films, 1958), a violation of Ohio Revised Code (1963 Supp.), 2905.34. For the record, the US Supreme Court reversed the Ohio courts’ decision, with Justice Stewart concurring.

3. N.B.: many of the images presented here may be licensed under different copyright arrangements – caveat utilitor.

3 Jun 2010 ‧ Administrivia