About Us

Hello, I’m Michele.

Free Vintage Art is a website that remained trapped for several years in the thinking stages and was finally part of my 2013 New Year’s Resolution. I purchased the domain name and started building this site on January 1, 2013. I got side tracked for a few months but a generous donation of a number of great images, from a nice lady named Tina, breathed new life into the project and I don’t plan on looking back.

As of now, I’m the only one working on Free Vintage Art. I like to spend more time writing about each image and include a bit of trivia about the artist, publisher or subject matter; so there will always be other sites that may have more vintage art than I do. But, that’s OK. I hope people will come to love this site as much as they do my other art and image based sites.

I’ve designed the site to be fairly plain to show the images at their best. And, yes, there is some advertising here – otherwise I wouldn’t be able to continue running the site.

I have been working with vintage art and public domain images since 2006. Up until now, I have not had a blog or worked with those images that are fully in the public domain in the United States but may not be considered in the public domain in the rest of the world. The United States placed anything published before 1923 in the public domain – disregarding the 70 years after death standard recognized by most of the rest of the world. The same law also places some items published without a copyright notice in the public domain.

Why does that all matter? My first site which features copyright free images, Reusable Art, follows the stricter Berne Convention copyright standard to make the collection usable for just about anyone, anywhere. But, by following that stricter copyright standard, I could not share with you countless great images that are considered in the public domain in my own country. I have been stashing away those images for years in preparation for launching Free Vintage Art.

Every effort will be made to ensure that only works truly in the public domain will appear on this website. Original publication information will be included with each image. It is my sincere hope that I don’t inadvertently include anything on this site that may still be under copyright.

For the most part, I will be offering the vintage images on Free Vintage Art in sizes that will fit, when printed, on a four inch by six inch post card. I figure that makes them card-ready as well as easily re-sizable to smaller sizes. The obvious exceptions will be for repeating patterns, gift tags and any image that is simply not of a high enough quality to increase to that size.

Update for 2024:

Gosh, it’s hard to believe this site is 11 years old. Sadly, I’ve not given it the attention it deserves for much of that time. I’ve added only a few new images in the past few years. Hopefully, this year, I’ll be updating this site and adding new, vintage illustrations more frequently than I have been.

I spent most of my time online promoting other artists and hoping to put some life back into vintage and public domain illustrations of artists long gone in hopes of helping new ones. For the past few years, I have been focussing on my own artistic endeavors.

This site and Reusable Art reflect my admiration for those who can draw and paint. Saying even my stick figures need subtitles has been a family joke since I was a child. Drawing and painting are not talents I’ve been gifted with. These sites gave me the opportunity to explore those worlds like I never had before. Through them I’ve met many wonderful characters; the artists who created them; and folks, like me, who love their work 80 years or more since the artist last held a pencil or brush.

It took a while before I began putting my focus on my own artistic endeavors. Fear of failure or imposter syndrome may have contributed. But, I’m now on my way to becoming an artist, in my own right.

I hope, despite not having updated this site in a while; you’ll still find it useful.

If, you would like to check out my art; please visit Michele Tway Mixed Media & Fiber Art.