Hey, boho home decor aficionados: Looking for vintage illustrations to finesse a gallery wall, but you don’t have a lot of dough?
Look no further than the New York Public Library’s digital collection, where more than 600,00 images, all in the public domain and free for downloading, are listed in an on-line, searchable catalog.
Collections span fashion, zoology, science, nature, medicine, posters, receipts and contracts, vintage magazine covers, advertising art, Works Progress Administration art, maps and atlases, gay and lesbian history, theatrical photographs, book art and illustrations, New York scenes, paintings, and more.
What about quality?
To test image quality, I simply did a copy and paste into Microsoft Word. Without adjusting its approximately 5-by-7-inch size, I then printed it on the “normal” resolution setting of my color inkjet printer, and it came out good enough for framing.
All the flora and fauna images sent me in a tailspin!
Paintings, posters and illustrations galore…
And these paintings of India would be so right for a British colonial or other tropical/coastal decor.
Believe me, I’ve only scratched the surface with the images shown here.
Here’s that link again: New York Public Library digital collection
Make sure you budget plenty of time for browsing, and have fun getting lost in the search for the perfect pictures for your home sweet home.