Foster, Vere. Vere Foster's Drawing Copy-Books: Adopted by the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland. London: Marcus Ward, 1869. 16.5 cm x 21 cm x 0.2 cm.
ON DRAWING Until Talbot’s 1839 invention of photography, the hand-drawn, hand-carved, or hand-etched line was an element of every reproduced image. This effect only later began to seem like a layer of visual interference. The books in this case use their illustrations to display the practice of drawing by hand—as craft, art, design, scientific method, textual decoration, writing aid, as taught to children—and as the origin of print illustration.