Second, mushroom prints.  Style at Home used our mushroom prints in one of their high/low pieces (Here’s the PDF, posted by permission:  styleathome_nov2009_highlow ]

XXXXXX has mushroom images for $18K  [Swivelchair update 08.28.10: We originally posted the image, named the vendor and provided a link back -- and then the link was broken and the image vanished - so probably we offended. Offended what? We're not sure. It could have been posting the price, as this particular aggregator site requires a log in to see vendor prices. Be that as it may, we meant no harm, only to admire original prints and provide a copy for the rest of us, and who knows? Maybe one of our readers is a zillionaire and will buy that $18K set. If we had that kind of money, we'd be buying all kinds of rare books  - and scanning them and posting the images here. So we apologize, secret vendor, if we did something wrong, and we invite you to post in our comments section exactly what the problem was.]

Vintage Printable Mushrooms:

And, over this past year, we’ve heard you! We’re trying to make the site easier/better/faster. Other revisions:

• Google color search for “yellow” was picking up everything with that golden-aged color. The backgrounds are whiter now — alas, for those who want to know “how can I make them look older” — we’re not experts, but probably printing on some antique-looking paper would do the trick;
• We’ve done what we could with the old images to keep those available if they show up on search, and apologies for any dead links.   Most of the old images will be duplicated with the new site;
• We’ve put in source information where we have it, but please know that this site is far more superficial – we’re focused on providing pretty pictures/interesting images rather than antiquarian documentation;
• We’re trying to speed up page loads (reducing side bars, giving e books their own page, etc.)

New images:

OK, we’ve cleared our decks and figured out the new formatting, tagged and buffed up the images, and will be spending the next few weeks (promise. . .) putting the site back together. We’ll have a static front page with navigation on top, and the blog on the bottom, and flash galleries so that browsing is e-z. The images are google search optimized (fingers crossed) and hopefully searchable.

Our usual, je ne sais quoi, dash of magic, of key words (like, “bad idea” or “porcupine” or “material adverse condition” ) and our organizational skills are pretty much the same.

The site is a little over a year old, and clearly, there is an unmet need for public domain images without a lot of signing in, paywalls, PDF conversions, and all the rest that the image libraries do to make it difficult for the public to have access to public domain images.

The images are

free free free natch.

“Swivelchair, I want results, not excuses!” (to quote Swivelchair’s former boss).

OK, we promised we’d be done by 4th of July and well, we’re almost done.

Cough cough. We were sick. The dog ate it. We lost our homework. The check is in the mail.

Actually, we’re about 1000 images away from being pretty thoroughly tagged, buffed and scrubbed, better than before.

And in case anyone is wondering, this truly is because of our screw-up, and images will remain free, free, free, there will be no charge ever of course (shout out:  All the libraries and organizations who budgeted public and private funds for FTEs to put thousands of years of science books on line — we’re almost ready to modify our rant in the About and Manifesto page. .  ).

So, our sheepish thank you to everyone again for your patience and kindness. (We note in passing that  no one except those in our immediate vicinity has said “you’re an idiot, don’t you know how to use an FTP program?”)

Sociologists should do a study to find out why people who are interested in vintage images (that’d be you) are so creative, patient and overall terrific. Is it a self selecting population? Or does looking at vintage images make you a better person?

We’re only partially kidding about the sociological aspect –check out the Vintage Printable users links (right hand side bar, scroll down) and our Facebook page has 700+ contacts, and we’re just getting started there.

(For the social sciences wonks: Happiness can be socially contagious  — there are studies that clusters of happiness are a breeder reactor for more happiness. (See, e.g.,  Fowler, J.H. and N.A. Christakis. (2008). Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study. BMJ 337a2338 doi:10.1136/bmj.a2338)  So going to start our own social contagion of happiness. If sprinkling some vintage images here and there does the trick, that’s an easy one.)

Miscellaneous new images –

OK, so we’re going to to it up right and proper, indubitably, no more tossing.
We’re almost done re-tagging all 8-10K images, and we’ve been looking at different gallery programs, to even see if we want to stay with WordPress. WordPress is great, but there’s no really clean way to tag/index the images 10 ways to Sunday, like we’d like to do, and still have the images available for search engines.

We may end up keeping this site and archiving it, but then setting up the original site with one of the off the shelf photo organizers.

So far, we like Gallery 123, but there are also some other ones that we need to test drive.

Thank you everyone for your supportive and polite e mails! In the mean time, here are some new images, yet to be indexed and put up.