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With my on-again/off-again phone problem persisting it’s getting impossible to post anything substantial here so I may as well take a break for a few days while I try and get the line fixed. I’m hoping this won’t take too long but given the failures of the phone company on previous occasions nothing is certain. [...]

I’ve been having trouble doing anything online today due to a recurrent fault with the phone line so here’s something florid and serpentine from Figaro illustré for December, 1896. The title is something about a king and a parrot but that’s as much as I’m able to tell you.

Not had one of these posts for a while but the theme still seems inexhaustible. The cute dancer above is Mathieu from a set I linked to earlier by Jean-Philippe Guillemain. Below there’s a pose that’s closer to Flandrin’s original, complete with seascape and a no doubt uncomfortable rocky perch. This one is from a [...]

Johnny Trunk of Trunk Records reissued the soundtrack to The Wicker Man in 1997. Mr Trunk’s latest delve into the cultural past is Own Label: Sainsbury’s Design Studio, a book from Fuel examining the supermarket chain’s packaging design of the 1960s and 1970s. Creative Review shows some examples while I have to note the uncanny [...]

Following the mention yesterday of my facsimile John Speed map I set about searching for the map in question since it’s managed to survive all these years. For the moment I haven’t been able to find it but going through a portfolio of old drawings I finally found this item, a map or chart or [...]

Compass rose by John Speed (1610). Be still, my beating heart… Every so often this graphic designer has been known to complain that there isn’t a decent resource for those cartographic details known as compass roses. Well today I hit the motherlode with the discovery of Alte Schiffskompasse und Kompassteile im Besitz Hamburger Staatsanstalten (1910) [...]

Mr Ayres is a blogger at Form is Void, an occasional commenter on these pages and also a photographer with a keen eye for detail and the occasional outbreak of alarming taxidermy. I especially like the architectural pieces, and I never tire of seeing rusted surfaces and flaking paintwork (one of the best things about [...]

Some speculative architecture that for once isn’t from Paris in 1900. Bruno Taut (1880–1938) gets labelled an Expressionist architect although it’s always a hazardous business connecting people in other disciplines to whatever art movement may be around at the time. The Glass Pavilion was a showcase structure commissioned by the German glass industry for the [...]

Something discovered following another delve through the collections of etchings and engravings at the Internet Archive where a frustrated search for one subject turns up something else. This 1549 folio of architectural engravings is credited to architect and designer Jacques Androuet du Cerceau (1510–1584), and the plates are based on earlier renderings by Agostino Veneziano [...]

Aleister Crowley in 1912. Back in 1999 I found myself making notes for a short essay on the subtle and often tenuous presence of Aleister Crowley in cinema. Despite Crowley’s reputation in the early years of the 20th century—famously labelled by tabloid hyperbole as “The Wickedest Man in the World”—he doesn’t seem to have ever [...]

If Jean Cocteau had made a horror film it might have resembled George Franju’s dreamy and disturbing body-horror masterwork Les Yeux Sans Visage (1960). I’ve not been able to trace the artist for this poster but it’s a good example of the diluted Surrealism which was still prevalent in poster graphics at this time. If [...]

The Peacock Room (1876–1877). More Japonism courtesy of the Google Art Project where it’s possible to pan around this view of Whistler’s Peacock Room at the Freer Gallery of Art. There’s only one view, unfortunately, it would have been good to see the reverse angle or, better still, a full panorama. The Princess from the [...]

Kay Nielsen’s meticulous approach to illustration is shown to great effect in the colour plates for this 1914 collection of fairy tales subtitled Old Tales from the North. The theme might be northern but Nielsen (who was Danish) maintains his beautifully hybrid style with its hints of Japonism and Persian miniatures. The whole book can [...]

UFO Coming (1967) by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat. It’s always difficult to choose a favourite from the posters that Nigel Waymouth and the late Michael English produced under the name Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, their standards remained high (so to speak) throughout their partnership. But I always liked the ejaculating penis butterfly on [...]

Knight of Autumn (1971). A pair of intaglio prints by a Czech illustrator and ex libris artist whose work helped sustain that strand of Surrealism which has never quite expired in Eastern Europe. These are from a larger selection of prints found here, and the tip comes via the ~Wunderkammer~. Mirrors II (1986). Elsewhere on [...]

“The rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates.” Above and below: illustrations by Charles Robinson from The Happy Prince and Other Tales, an edition from 1920. Continuing an occasional series. I’ve yet to see a copy of the recent annotated and unexpurgated edition of The Picture of [...]

I’m sure I’ll run out of things to say on this subject eventually but it’s showing no sign of happening yet. In an exposition with its fair share of unusual buildings, the Grand Globe Céleste in the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 was one of the more notable constructions. An enormous globe built on the [...]

Manuel Orazi (1860–1934) was one of the best of the many Mucha imitators. An untitled & undated posting at Indigo Asmodel. The mob now appeared to consider themselves as superior to all authority; they declared their resolution to burn all the remaining public prisons, and demolish the Bank, the Temple, Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, the [...]

Cover concept by Chip Kidd. I noted the imminent arrival of Gary Spencer Millidge’s labour of love last month and the volume itself turned up this week, and what a book it is, a heavyweight hardback that’s far more lavish than I anticipated. The first surprise comes when removing the dust jacket to find Alan’s [...]

More from the University of Heidelberg’s treasure trove of digitised books, Die Ausstellung der Darmstädter Künstler-Kolonie (1901) is also related to Deustche Kunst und Dekoration by being a product of that journal’s publisher, Alexander Koch. The book showcases the work and philosophy of the Darmstadt art and design colony, many of whose artworks and architecture [...]

A slight return to Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, the German periodical of art and decoration. Volume 3, which covers the period from October 1898 to March 1899, was missing from the copies stored at the Internet Archive but has recently been added to the burgeoning collection of books and journals being digitised at the University [...]

Signe de poussière (1980). Selections from an ink-and-watercolour series by Jean-Pierre Velly, Bestiaire Perdu, or Lost Bestiary, created from 1978 to 1980. Dans mon corps carapacé (1980). Previously on { feuilleton } • Detmold’s insects • Entomologia

Ludwig von Hofmann was a German artist whose work has already appeared via the above example from Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration. Many of Hofmann’s drawings and paintings appeared in that magazine’s rival publication, Pan magazine, for which the artist also provided a cover design for the collected editions, and vignettes for the interiors. Hofmann is [...]

Chris Parks created effects sequences for The Fountain and The Tree of Life. His showreel can be viewed here. Previously on { feuilleton } • Len Lye • Matrix III by John Whitney • Symphonie Diagonale by Viking Eggeling • Mary Ellen Bute: Films 1934–1957 • Norman McLaren • John Whitney’s Catalog • Arabesque by [...]

Faustine (1928) by Harry Clarke. • This week’s Harry Clarke fix: 50 Watts reposts the Faust illustrations while Golden Age Comic Book Stories has the illustrated Swinburne. • What Goes Steam in the Night is an evening with contributors to The Steampunk Bible hosted in London by The Last Tuesday Society on September 6th: Co-author [...]

Wonder Stories, July 1931. Illustration by Frank R. Paul. Looking over Bruce Pennington’s artwork this week sent me back to some of my Clark Ashton Smith paperbacks, many of which sport Pennington covers. One of my favourite Smith stories, The City of the Singing Flame, is also one of his finest pieces, and a story [...]

Wilhelm Volz (1855–1901) was a German artist whose work I might not have paid any attention to at all had this lithograph not been featured in that cult volume Dreamers of Decadence. As a composition it’s a lot more interesting than Volz’s paintings, the circle for a halo being an unusual detail. There’s also more [...]

The Pastel City (1971), the first in M. John Harrison’s peerless series of Viriconium books. Today’s post is another guest entry over at Tor.com. I’d been intending on writing something about Bruce Pennington‘s art for some time, having already covered the work of Ian Miller, my other favourite genre cover artist of the 1970s. (By [...]

Andel západního okna. Leonidas Kryvosej is a contemporary Czech Surrealist whose work I’d known for a while from an exhibition catalogue. I’d always wanted to see more so it’s a pleasure to discover a substantial set of paintings on the website he shares with Lucie Hrusková. A biographical note tells us that: Leonidas Kryvosej was [...]

Is Les Temps Morts a French figure of speech? The phrase translates as “idle periods” as well as the more literal “dead times”, so the title of this short film from 1964 may have some punning intent. This was René Laloux’s second film as director, and one I’d not seen before until it turned up [...]

Demon (sitting) (1890) by Mikhail Vrubel. Another Symbolist painting ferreted out from the collections at the Google Art Project, this is actually one of a number of demon figures painted by Mikhail Vrubel (1856–1910). The subject marks it as Symbolist but the almost Expressionist style is very 20th century which makes its date of 1890 [...]