European and Islamic astronomical illustration
Celestial
Moon phases, star charts and the instruments people used to read them.
- Motifslunar phase · eight-point star · astrolabe ring · constellation line
- Line weightbold and easy
- Available onprints · apparel · home · tech · books · digital
The story
Where Celestial comes from
This family borrows from the engraved plates of early star atlases and from the graduated rings of the astrolabe — the instrument that let someone in Baghdad or Toledo work out the time from the height of a star. The things that make those objects beautiful are functional: the tick marks are a scale, the rings rotate, the eight-point stars mark the cardinal and intercardinal directions. We keep that. A moon in this family goes through real phases in the right order, and a ring of ticks is divided into a number that means something. It is a small honesty, and it is the difference between a celestial design and a sticker of a moon.
Samples
Four from this family
Everything it is on
5 products
In print
The books this family lives in
Merryfold Bold & Easy
Cozy Christmas Patterns
84 pages
Want this design on something we do not make yet?
Tell us the product and we will say honestly whether our partners can print it and whether the drawing survives at that size. Some of our families do not work on small items, and we would rather say so than sell you a blur.