Good sources of old images: engravings, drawings etc in the public domain

any ideas? i have to put together some archaic-looking fake archival material... need some specific images like spyglasses, opera glasses, masquerade masks that are in the public domain so i don't have to worry about getting sued up the chocha.

I asked on Ask Metafilter a while back:

http://ask.metafilter.com/48855/Where-can-I-find-out-of-copyright-botanical-engravings

(warning, I am about to dump a lot of bookmarks on this thread)

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/DLDecArts/

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/dreamanatomy/

http://www.fromoldbooks.org/

and the motherlode: http://delicious.com/BibliOdyssey/ and http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/ (delicious interface useful because they are categorized)

The Wisconsin one has particularly hi-res scans, btw

fromoldbooks is probably the most useful for the kind of images you need, unless you need that Victorian lol Decemberists album cover look (it's mostly much earlier stuff)

I think this is my favourite: http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Gallonio-TorturesAndTorments/pages/006-bound-to-the-circumference/

(title: Martyrs bound to the circumference of a great wheel, and rolled down a precipice)

Also note that anything pre-1900 or so is reliably public domain (exact date depends on the type of work) and you are free to use any one's scan, even if they try to sell it to you, whatever the person who performed the scan says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_Ltd._v._Corel_Corporation

e.g. most of the stuff on the NYPL website is free to use and they have no power to stop you, despite their rights page. (but if you need a higher res version for your project, and that is not on the website, then you may need to pay an administrative fee for them to perform the scan.)

Also this for some pretty 19th century sheet music (maybe some opera glasses there): http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/hasm/browse

http://bibigreycat.blogspot.com/ and http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/ are pretty essential

the images on the first site are not public domain