Memorable mammals and other creatures

All images taken from Johan Nieuhofs Gedenkweerdige Brasiliaense zee- en lantreize,  1682.
More can be found here.

Menko – vintage Japanese game cards

Found in a secondhand bookstore in Tokyo.

Based on these I made a poster with some powerful animals: 31 Prime Creatures

Ephemera 1

A collection of personal treasures. The pictures were taken with a rickety old camera.

The man who gave me the catapult carved a cross on it so that the all-seeing-eye might help my aim.

Things I used to wear around my neck: a shark’s tooth, fish vertebrae, a 13 Amp fuse…

Me and my brothers’ teeth.

Amongst these pocket knives is a U.S. army knife given to me by my granddad.
I’ve always imagined it once belonged to a WWII liberator.

1930’s scrapbook

Found this little beauty at a flea market in Amsterdam.

Luftwaffe scrapbook

This curious find came from a thrift-shop in Scheveningen.
The pages contain the letterhead of Dr. Nathan Birnbaum from The Jewish People Service, also known as Der Jüdische Volksdienst.

Nathan Birnbaum was a Jewish writer and journalist who coined the term “Zionism” (1890). Read more about him here.

In 1933, at the time of the Nazi rise to power, Birnbaum fled to the Netherlands.
He died in Scheveningen in 1937 after a period of severe illness.

I wonder what he would have thought about the way his letterhead was put to use.