It’s hard to find a nice, antique-looking blog theme, whether to use on your own self-hosted blog, or on a hosted site like WordPress.com. I’ve cobbled together a few bits over the years, but needed something better to adapt in GIMP as a text-separator. I ended up modifying one I had, and overlaying a nicer one on top of it from Old Book Illustrations. There are some wonderful antique ornaments there, and they even have a meme generator:

This site is dedicated to providing our visitors with a wide range of illustrations scanned from old books. Most of these vintage pictures are originally wood engravings or woodcuts, fewer are etchings or metal engravings; if you are looking for nineteenth century or victorian clipart, you might just find it here. You are welcome to use our pictures in your school or educational projects, as well as in your artwork or in your scrapbook; you can also use them to make CD sleeves, banners, websites, etc.

According to the copyright laws in many countries, all illustrations in our galleries belong to the public domain and as such, they are free to use for personal and commercial purpose. They are suitable, for instance, for graphic designers to use, without the need of any prior authorization. For more details, please see our terms of use.

A high resolution set (approximately 2000 px in width or height, depending on the format) containing ten pictures, is available for download as a zip file. Its content changes every now and then.

via Welcome to » Old Book Illustrations: pictures scanned from old books.