kuvastot

Kuvastot is the Finnish plural of kuvasto, a noun that denotes a collection of pictures or illustrations. The term is commonly used in publishing, museums, libraries, and art criticism to describe image compilations, illustrated sections of books, or image catalogs. A kuvasto may refer to a specific set of plates or to an archive of visual material, and it can accompany scholarly works or catalogues of artworks.

Etymology and usage: Kuvasto combines kuva, meaning picture or image, with the suffix -sto, which in Finnish forms nouns indicating a place, collection, or repository. The plural kuvastot is used when referring to multiple image collections or illustrated sections. In practice, the word appears in contexts such as museum catalogues, art reference books, and digitization projects, where it helps distinguish visual material from text.

Examples of application: A museum might publish a kuvasto as part of a catalogue raisonné, presenting plates of works with captions and metadata. A national library could maintain kuvastot for digitized photographs or prints. In educational publishing, a kuvasto may appear as a dedicated illustrated section or as an image index linked to the text.

See also: kuvakokoelma (image collection), kuvapankki (image bank), valokuvakokoelma (photo collection). The term is primarily used in Finnish-language contexts and refers to image-related compilations rather than to a single international entity.