Get the latest tech news

10 Years of Pomological Watercolors

A decade ago today I published a blog post calling for the US government to release its paintings of fruits. The Pomological Watercolor Collection, as I had recently come to know, is a beautiful and remarkable corpus of over 7,000 pictures of fruits and other biological specimens, made between the 1880s and 1940s. Through a handful of FOIA requests I’d learned that the images had been meticulously digitized and put online for purchase, but that less than 100 pictures had been sold that way — not nearly enough to justify the paywall.

Through a handful of FOIA requests I’d learned that the images had been meticulously digitized and put online for purchase, but that less than 100 pictures had been sold that way — not nearly enough to justify the paywall. There are so many beautiful pictures in this collection, but in this post I wanted to highlight some of the weirder ones.It was a strange rallying call, and certainly feels like it comes from a different era, but (if I may humbly say so) it worked. I made so many of these buttons that, ten years later and on the other side of the country, I still find them in nooks and crannies.Randomly spotted one of the paintings in the background of the diner set in Schitt's Creek!I found the pomological watercolors through my advocacy for the public domain — a cause that can sometimes feel a little lonely and dispiriting.

Get the Android app