File:SB-07-222-source-2.png

Summary

Description

Still-life study in oil by Miss Mary E. Cook, matching H. P. Blavatsky's Scrapbooks, volume 7, page 222, item 3. The vase decorated with a cock, flowers, bare upper stem, fern at the right, draped foreground, dark background and engraved strokes match. The whole frame and printed caption are preserved. The caption credits the oil study to Mary E. Cook, painting class, School of Design for Women, Cooper Union, with R. Swain Gifford as teacher. No engraver or ceramic maker is inferred, and this exact design match does not identify the physical copy used for the album cutting.

Original caption:

STILL-LIFE STUDY IN OIL BY MISS MARY E. COOK, PAINTING CLASS, SCHOOL OF DESIGN FOR WOMEN, COOPER UNION; R. SWAIN GIFFORD, TEACHER.

From Scribner's Monthly, vol. XVI, no. 6, October 1878, p. 761, opening page of The Art-Schools of New York (New York: Scribner & Co.). The issue masthead and original copyright notice explicitly print October 1878 and 1878. The repository's leaf/page map identifies leaf 779 as p. 761; the neighboring mapping entries identify pp. 760 and 762. The date of this impression does not establish the scrapbook leaf's assembly date.

Source

Internet Archive / Robarts Library, University of Toronto, identifier centuryillustrat16newyuoft, ark:/13960/t4kk9633q, call number AIV-5179. The broad catalogue title The Century illustrated monthly magazine and date range 1871–1930 describe the serial record; the physical page used here is headed Scribner's Monthly, October 1878.

• Complete source page.
• Complete volume and catalogue.
• Downloadable processed JP2 archive, exact member centuryillustrat16newyuoft_jp2/centuryillustrat16newyuoft_0779.jp2.
• Leaf and page mapping.

Thank you to Robarts Library, University of Toronto, and Internet Archive for freely providing this digitized volume.

Rights

Historical illustration published in the United States in 1878, now in the public domain by publication age; reproduced by a faithful scan. The current repository record, checked 4 November 2026, states Possible copyright status: NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT, region US, and records a visible 1878 copyright notice. This catalogue assessment is reported as such; no Creative Commons licence, Public Domain Mark, or separate institutional reproduction licence is asserted for this scan.

File and processing

Lossless RGB PNG, 1360 × 2170 pixels, retaining the natural cream paper colour. Input is the repository's processed JP2 at 2312 × 3546 pixels, 524528 bytes, SHA-256 25a8f812f06cce49ad3d62373effdd54eeff0d1d105b32da4c131facefebe5cb. It is not described as an original camera master or an enlarged PDF rendering.

Native-pixel crop (480, 840)–(1840, 3010), right and bottom exclusive. The outer frame and complete two-line caption remain. Alignment checked against the top and bottom frame: approximately +0.210 and −0.170 degrees, opposite small slopes, mean +0.020 degrees. The already nearly level scan was not resampled or artificially dewarped. No rotation, enlargement, colour or tonal correction, sharpening, retouching or reconstruction. Final crop pixels were independently checked against the unchanged JP2.