From a drawing in 'Navigations de Alouys de Cademoste.-La Navigation du Capitaine Pierre Sintre', Alvise da ca da Mosto, 1895.
Source Firkin
Not so subtle. These tileable wood patterns are very useful.
Source Elemis
Based on several public domain drawings on Wikimedia Commons. This was formed from a rectangular tile. The tile can be accessed in Inkscape by selecting the rectangle and using shift-alt-i
Source Firkin
Produced using the clouds, flames and glass blocks plug-ins in Paint.net and the resulting .PNG vectorised with Vector Magic.
Source Firkin
From a drawing in 'Hundert Jahre in Wort und Bild', S. Stefan, 1899.
Source Firkin
This one is super crisp at 2X. Lined paper with some dust and scratches.
Source HQvectors
ZeroCC tileable moss texture, photographed and made by me. CC0
Source Sojan Janso
Sounds French. Some 3D square diagonals, that’s all you need to know.
Source Graphiste
A repeatable image with dark background and metal grid pattern.
Source V. Hartikainen
Background formed from the iconic plastic construction bricks that gave me endless hours of fun when I was a lad.
Source Firkin
Background pattern made in "Grunge-Like" style. Available in both SVG and JPG formats. Edit to your needs then click the download button.
Source V. Hartikainen
Used in small doses, this could be a nice subtle pattern. Used on a large surface, it’s dirty!
Source Paul Reulat
This is so subtle I hope you can see it! Tweak at will.
Source Alexandre Naud
And some more testing, this time with Seamless Studio. It’s Robots FFS!
Source Seamless Studio
A repeating graphic with ancient pattern. I came up with this name/title at last minute, so you may find that there is very little of ancientness in this pattern after all.
Source V. Hartikainen
The tile this is based on can be retrieved by selecting the rectangle in Inkscape and using shift+alt+i.
Source Firkin
This seamless light brown background texture resembles a wallpaper with vertical stripes. One way to use it is as a tiled background on web sites.
Source V. Hartikainen
This one looks like a cork panel. Feel free to use it as a tiled background on your blog or website.
Source V. Hartikainen
From a drawing in 'Les Chroniqueurs de l'Histoire de France depuis les origines jusqu'au XVIe siècle', Henriette Witt, 1884.
Source Firkin
As simple and subtle as it gets. But sometimes that’s just what you want.
Source Designova
Prismatic 3D Isometric Tessellation Pattern 6
Source GDJ
From a drawing in 'La Principauté de Liège et les Pays-Bas au XVIe siècle', Société des Bibliophiles Liégeois ,1887.
Source Firkin
From a drawing in 'Resa i Afrika, genom Angola, Ovampo och Damaraland', P. Moller, 1899.
Source Firkin
Colour version that is close to the original drawing uploaded to Pixabay by pencilparker.
Source Firkin