File:SB-04-108-source-2.png

Summary

Description

Triangular Dragon Tailpiece. A white curling dragon in a dark inverted triangular field with a double border. The dragon’s head, curling body, limbs, scrolls and border match the ornament below The Whale and the Salamander on scrapbook inlay 108.2. The full museum sheet retains that fable’s text, outside this ornament-only crop. The same ornament also appears on scrapbook page 193, item7, where the full sheet has now been directly compared; its separate Sources occurrence follows item4, The Whale and the Salamander. This is different from the winged triangular creature under The Physician and the Hyena.

The same composition is confirmed in G. Washington Æsop's Fables, illustrated by F. S. Church (New York: The World, 35 Park Row, 1878), printed p.46. The book title is dated 1878; the copyright notice 1877. No first-publication or physical-clipping-source claim is made.

Compared directly with H. P. Blavatsky's Scrapbooks, volume4, page108, item9. The museum catalogue title The Whale and the Salamander describes the text-side view; it is not automatically assigned to the different three-part illustration on the other side. The exact media view is identified below.

Source

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, accession 1938-57-1070-186, exact media CHSDM-57271_02-000001. Credit line: Bequest of Erskine Hewitt. The official record describes printed black ink on paper, date1878, illustrator Frederick Stuart Church, catalogue status Research in Progress. This is a photograph of a printed cutting mounted in an album, not a preparatory drawing.

• Museum object record.
• Persistent object identifier.
• Persistent identifier of this exact media view.
• Complete public image-delivery JPEG used for this crop.
• Larger high-resolution JPEG advertised in the official metadata, 4513 × 5487 pixels; not used for this file.
• Matching Fables, 1878, printed p.46.

Thank you to Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum for preserving this material and freely providing its photographs and Open Access metadata.

File and processing

PNG, 299 × 269 pixels, RGB. The source actually obtained is the museum's public image-delivery JPEG, 3290 × 4000 pixels, 438700 bytes, SHA-256 64edf4ff54ea51481f68e744a0f62acd20246a26c3e7d57ccedc35c9425f91d5. This is the provider's 4000-pixel-long-edge representation, not the larger advertised master. The full photograph's dimensions do not describe the resolution of the small pasted illustration. In particular, the dragon crop is only 299 × 269 pixels including margins; no enlarged fine detail is claimed.

Crop (1720, 2225)–(2035, 2510). One bicubic alignment correction of 0.310989 degrees clockwise, based on the straight printed fable text baseline, not the intrinsically angled triangular ornament. Final trim (8, 8)–(307, 277); right and bottom bounds are exclusive. No added canvas is included. The complete relevant matrix and frame are preserved. Natural paper colour, marks and printed lines remain. No enlargement, colour or tonal correction, sharpening, retouching or reconstruction was applied. PNG compression is lossless; the source itself is JPEG. The complete source is linked above.

Rights

The saved official Smithsonian Open Access record, captured on 29 October 2026, specifies CC0 for both this exact media view and its metadata. The underlying nineteenth-century printed illustration is public-domain historical material. The attribution, accession and credit line are retained above.