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Feathers and Weights (2016) by Susan Jamison. • The latest release from A Year In The Country is No More Unto The Dance, “a reflection of nightlife memories and the search for the perfect transportative electronic beat”. • Depero Futurista (1927), the bolted book showcasing the artistic work of Fortunato Depero, returns in a facsimile […]

Since blogging here has become sporadic I find myself continually playing catch-up. Recent arrivals in the book department have included two art-related items that feature work of mine. The first is the catalogue for the Things To Come exhibition which ended last month at the Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Israel. When I posted photos […]

Alan Moore’s magnum opus, Jerusalem, is published today so I can talk at last about my small involvement with this huge novel. The request came through just before Christmas last year: Alan and his publishers, Knockabout Comics, wished to know whether I could create a map for the endpapers of the book. Not a flat […]

US one sheet (1996). Heinrich Holzmüller (also spelt Holtzmüller) was a German printmaker and calligrapher active during the 16th century. He may have been dead for centuries but this inconvenience didn’t prevent him from appearing as an interviewer in the catalogue for the MoMA exhibition of artworks by the Brothers Quay that ran throughout the […]

Roger Dean book covers last week; this week it’s postage stamps. These are exclusive to the Isle of Man Post Office, unfortunately, so there’s little chance of buying them over the counter in mainland Britain. First day covers, presentation packs and individual sheets may be ordered from the post office website, however. For those who […]

• Cover art by the Quays for Inner Sanctums—Quay Brothers: The Collected Animated Films 1979–2013, a Blu-ray collection which will be released by the BFI next month. Being something of an obsessive where the Quays are concerned I have a lot of this material already (some of the films in multiple copies), but I’ve been […]

It’s unusual but not unprecedented for foreign publishers to use the first-edition cover art when they publish a translation of a book. One of my cover designs for Mike Shevdon’s Courts of the Fayre series was reused for a French edition published by Panini/Eclipse in 2014. This year it’s the turn of The Singular & […]

The Addams Family In Kimonos by Matsuyama Miyabi. Via S. Elizabeth. • “They’re not the men you’ll walk down the street and lock eyes with, or that you’ll spot at a bar casually. They’re a fantasy.” Michael Valinsky reviewing Tom House: Tom Of Finland In Los Angeles edited by Michael Reynolds. Related (and almost a […]

Bunkers were a recurrent feature in the media of the 1980s, a consequence of increasing Cold War tensions following the election of Ronald Reagan and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The decade birthed new horrors of the body-mutating variety, and also reanimated some older ones in the figure of the knife-wielding psychopath, but the omnipresent […]

Palm Night (2016) by Nick Liefhebber. • “Gortner includes reference to the little known Hollywood ‘sewing circles’ (code word for lesbian communities) of which Marlene became a part. This group included Ann Warner, Lili Damita, Claudette Colbert, and Dolores del Río.” Walter Holland reviewing Marlene, a “novelization” of the life of Marlene Dietrich by CW […]

I’ve been rather lax in adding to the music design section of my web pages. The last update was almost a year ago but I’ve produced several new designs since then, including more work for the experimentalists at the Subtext label. There’s a new Subtext release coming soon but before that appears I can talk […]

One of the recent weekend posts linked to a Kickstarter page for a reprinting of Le Pater, one of several books designed and illustrated by Alphonse Mucha. Two years before Le Pater Mucha had created an equally sumptuous volume, Ilsée, Princesse de Tripoli. The Mucha Foundation describes the book thus: Based on Edmond Rostand’s La […]

I thought I’d already written something about my cover for Megan Derr’s gay fantasy novel, The High King’s Golden Tongue, but it seems not. This appeared last year from Less Than Three Press, and the next volume in the Tales of the High Court series, Pirate of Fathoms Deep, has been published this week. My […]

Alphonse Mucha’s Le Pater, a book of mystical Symbolism written, designed and illustrated by the artist, was published in a limited edition in 1899. The book has been out of print ever since but Thomas Negovan at Century Guild will be reprinting it later this year. • “Five axioms to define Europe: the coffee house; […]

Stasis, the second album by Pye Corner Audio for the Ghost Box label, will be released at the end of August. Design, as always, is by Julian House. • “In the modern internet world you have what I talk about as the ‘War of the Certain’: people insisting that their absolutist viewpoint, in 140 characters, […]

The Deluge (1920) by Winifred Knights. • Dennis Cooper‘s favourite fiction, poetry, nonfiction, film, music, art & internet of 2016 so far. (Thanks again for the nod to this blog!) • At Literary Hub: Jonathan Russell Clark on Jorge Luis Borges, and Jon Sealy on why indie presses [in the US] are opening bookstores. • […]

Avebury Kite (2006) by David Alderslade. • “Klaus Mann, son of Thomas Mann, author of Mephisto, was one of the first in Germany to write gay novels and plays.” Walter Holland reviews Cursed Legacy: The Tragic Life of Klaus Mann by Frederic Spotts. • The Pale Brown Thing, a shorter/alternate version of Fritz Leiber’s supernatural […]

Sphinx (2015) by Lupe Vasconcelos. • I’ve been reading my way through Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels for the past couple of weeks, and may well progress to some of her other books once I’m finished. Highsmith had a long career so there’s a lot to read on the web. Catching my eye this week were […]

From What is a Witch, “an illuminated manifesto on witchcraft” by Pam Grossman and Tin Can Forest. • “The other strand of influence for me from dance music was a production house called Savoy in Manchester, England. They were a super underground publishing house that printed cartoons and comic books, and they also released a […]

Snowflakes Are Dancing (1974); art direction; Joseph J. Stelmach; artwork: David B. Hecht. The Japanese composer Isao Tomita died last week so I’ve been listening to some of his early recordings, and thinking—as usual—about their cover designs. Tomita was by far the best of the many electronic musicians in the 1970s who took advantage of […]