Pamela Colman Smith’s Russian Ballet

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Another chance find at the Internet Archive. This small book from 1913 is an appraisal of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes written by noted actress Ellen Terry and with illustrations—which Archive.org doesn’t mention—by Pamela Colman Smith, an artist whose Tarot designs are some of the most successful ever created yet who received little credit for her work while she was alive. It’s a shame that the Internet Archive perpetuates this state of affairs despite her name on the book’s title page. This is a fascinating set of ink sketches all of which are marked by the distinctive monogram familiar from her Tarot cards. One of the drawings in the book is also marked by an obscene doodle; I’ll leave it to the curious to discover which one.

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Weekend links 10

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One of a number of vintage ads and ephemeral items at this Flickr set.

• From 1971: The Anthony Balch/William Burroughs/Jan Herman video experiment.

• The NYT reports on World on a Wire, a neglected science fiction drama by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

• “While some of the technology industry’s brightest minds were inventing the first PCs and developing groundbreaking software, they were also feeding their heads with LSD.”

• The archive of author and illustrator Mervyn Peake has been acquired by the British Library for £410,000.

• Thames & Hudson are publishing I Wonder, a book by the wonderful Marian Bantjes, later in the year. Her site has a preview. I want.

• The gays: It’s election season in the UK so My Gay Vote looks at how the three main parties have supported LGB issues. (No data for the graphs, however.) Is theatre finally glad to be gay? Yet more Tumblrs: I heart skinny boys & Cute boys with cats.

• Trend-spotter, “svengali”, Situationist and the man who named the Sex Pistols: RIP Malcolm McLaren. The Guardian ran a number of memorial pages. Related: Anarchy in Gardenstown.

• Dublin’s One City, One Book choice for April 2010 is The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The Catastrophist: Christopher Hitchens on JG Ballard.

Steampunk Taxidermy by Lisa Black.

• LIFE looks back at Aleister Crowley.

• Groovy songs of the week: Julie Driscoll (with Brian Auger & The Trinity), a pair of songs by Bob Dylan—This Wheel’s On Fire—and Donovan—Season Of The Witch—and sets which look like a collaboration between Verner Panton and Marcel Duchamp. Amazing.

Cabala, Speculum Artis Et Naturae In Alchymia

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The plates from Stephan Michelspacher’s Cabala, Speculum Artis Et Naturae In Alchymia (1654) are familiar from histories of alchemy but SLUB Dresden has high-resolution scans of the entire book. Also there is Wenzel Jamnitzer’s astonishing Perspectiva Corporum Regularium (1568), a volume covered in detail at BibliOdyssey last year.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The etching and engraving archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
Digital alchemy

The art of Nicomi Nix Turner

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The Shaman.

Gorgeous drawings from this American artist, none of which are as innocent as they first appear. Some of my friends with Wunderkammer obsessions will be interested in the three-dimensional constructions detailed on her blog and her Flickr pages.

Via Phantasmaphile.

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Arsenic.

Previously on { feuilleton }
The art of Juliet Jacobson