Hundreds of Gorgeous Vintage Watercolors of Mushrooms
From 1913 to 1944, amateur mycologist Hans Walty created hundreds of fantastic watercolor illustrations of mushrooms, which are available to peruse in very high-resolution at Wikimedia Commons. There’s not a great deal of information about Walty or his drawings online,1 but I did find this piece from the Swiss National Library.
His images depict the colours and shapes of the mushrooms’ fruiting bodies and sometimes also include drawings of microscopic views. The fungi are usually depicted from the side and often from the top and bottom as well. Walty also frequently documented the characteristics of the stems, spores and undersides of the caps. The hobby mycologist also produced an explanatory book to accompany his illustrations that contains descriptions of the mushrooms, with each specimen being assigned a family and genus. His illustrations often contain notes about the time and date the mushroom was found and whether it was edible, inedible or poisonous.
Walty’s illustrations were published in multiple editions of a Swiss mushroom guide from the 40s through the 70s. According to the German version of Wikipedia (translated): “For decades, 500 of his illustrations on mushrooms were considered a standard work on mushroom identification, especially in Switzerland.”
Again, you can browse through hundreds of Walty’s mushroom illustrations at Wikimedia Commons. (thx, christoph)
Not in English at least; Walty was born in Italy and lived in Germany and Switzerland for much of his life. A biography is available on the German version of Wikipedia. ↩
Discussion 5 comments
I was shocked that I couldn't really find these images online anywhere else...this seems like the sort of thing that Colossal, My Modern Met, Open Culture, etc. would have featured years ago. Good on kottke.org reader Christoph for spotting these.
Semi-related aside: this is the type of post that typically doesn't do that well on kottke.org ( even when it's an "exclusive" like this), but once it (presumably) spreads to other sites, does really well. I mean, look at those mushrooms! I am not sure why this is, but I know those sites have incredible distribution, esp on FB and Insta. And they are also more closely branded with visual content, so their readers are more likely/primed to enjoy and share w/ their friends/readers who are similarly interested in such things. The broadness of kottke.org is can definitely be a detriment sometimes.
I want this made into wallpaper immediately.
Right?? imagine your bathroom in full mushroom glory
Exactly! Perfect bathroom wallpaper.
I emailed the guy who did these great restorations of the hummingbird photos — we'll see what happens!
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