My father’s great grandmother emigrated to Ohio from Germany at the turn of the century, about 1904.  Since my grandparents died when I was quite young I don’t remember much about our visits to the area but I remember my mother and father were assigned the job of clearing out the house when my grandmother passed away.

There were pieces of jewelry and several pieces of china that stick out in my memory but it wasn’t until I was married and ready to decorate our current home that I pulled out a bound art book that had been given to me.

I’ve tried, with Google’s assistance, to search out the artist with out certain results.  There is an Anders Oscar Gottmann, 1828 – 1867, born in Sweden, but no samples of his work to convince me my book was his.  I don’t believe he was a relative of ours, many of the books I inherited had been collected along the way, but this book was clearly someone’s self-published pen and ink art book.

Caution!  The following information may horrify the true bibliophile:  The individual sketches are so wonderful, mounted on brown construction-like paper with a dark ink line framing each piece, that I dismantled the book and have framed numerous pieces for our walls.  [Truth is, the book was falling apart when I received it]. I gave 4 of the collection to my dear friend, Carla.  One went to the godparents of our children.  They have brought me pleasure each time I look at them in our home, much more so than if I kept the book on the shelf.

I hung a grouping of the dogs over the guest room bed.  Sadly, this photograph doesn’t do the images justice [and the room isn’t army green, what up with this exposure?!]

There are quite a lot of architectural drawings in the book, along with a Gothic alphabet, upper and lower case.

Some of the pages have multiple architectural elements.

Makes me wonder what he used as a model to draw from.

I framed 2 additional dog prints for my entry, yes, I like dogs.  More than that, the dog drawings were unusual breeds or variations of breeds you see today.

Here is a close up of the two…

and the final piece I’ve framed is an architectural detail that I thought particularly pretty.

If by some chance you know anything at all about art history and you’ve heard of A. Gottmann, I would love to hear from you.

I’m linking up at No Minimalist Here, stop by if you have time.