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Fob watch (c. 1890) made by Gorham for Tiffany. Concluding a week of tentacular posts. I was tempted to do something about tentacle porn but that subject has already been covered here, and besides, there’s rather a lot of it around these days. Given the writhing nature of octopus limbs you’d expect there to be [...]

Illustration by Robert A. Graef (1932). If the predatory octopuses of the Sargasso Sea are too mundane for you, how about an extra-dimensional Kraken named Khalk’ru which has to be placated with human sacrifice? This creature is the prime menace in A. Merritt’s Dwellers in the Mirage (1932), a novel I’m afraid I haven’t read [...]

Cthulhoid (2012). Hot on the scaly heels of my recent Cthulhu God comes a new collage work I was messing with over Christmas. This was done in part as a reaction to the earlier picture which I’m very happy with but which looks cleaner and flatter than I prefer for Lovecraft-related things. I’d also found [...]

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 [...]

A 1973 Ballantine edition of William Burroughs’ novel with a cover illustration from Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937) by Salvador Dalí. Via the Burroughs Book Covers archive. The Sel Publishing House, Turkey, published a new translation of The Soft Machine by William Burroughs in January, an edition which is now under investigation by the Istanbul Prosecutor’s [...]

The Twitter consensus yesterday was that CafePress products based on this design were required so here they are. As usual I never know what people want from CafePress so I tend to throw the design on their entire range so long as it fits the requisite size and shape. This piece works better than most [...]

Did someone say “woody”? Plenty more toy antics at TheOneCam. • And yet more Haeckelisms: Praying in Haeckel’s Garden, recent works by artist Mary O’Malley. • Seasons of the Peacock, the perennial showoff as depicted by a handful of Art Nouveau artists. A couple of examples there I hadn’t seen before. • Dorian Cope presents [...]

The work of French architect and designer René Binet (1866–1911) has been featured here before with one of his most famous creations, the monumental gate he designed for the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900. Philippe Jullian in his 1974 book about the exposition, The Triumph of Art Nouveau, calls the gate the “Porte Binet” and [...]

Histioteuthis ruppellii. Suckered pseudopods flex and writhe again this week with simultaneous postings at BibliOdyssey and Sci-Fi-O-Rama. Coincidence or some cephalopodic zeitgeist thing? You decide. BibliOdyssey has a fine set of natural history plates showing various squid and octopuses while Sci-Fi-O-Rama presents a small collection of illustrations by Barnaby Ward. If it’s boys and tentacles [...]

In which Ernst Haeckel’s Art Forms in Nature are given the Mandelbrot treatment. The example above is one of a number of variations created using the splendid Gorgon-headed Starfish, a creature I’ve messed with myself a couple of times. These fractal images have been created by the Subblue people using their Fractal Explorer plug-in for [...]

Okay, not really, but we can dream. From A Very Haeckel Christmas at Flickr. Haeckel’s original plates are now at Flickr also. Via DO. Previously on { feuilleton } • The art of Ying-Yueh Chuang • The art of Jennifer Maestre • Kirsten Hassenfeld’s paper sculptures • Darwin Day • The glass menagerie

Plant creature 1 (2001). Ying-Yueh Chuang’s ceramic sculptures are based on plant and animal forms, especially sea life. I haven’t seen any mention of her being inspired by Haeckel’s Art Forms in Nature but many of her creations certainly resemble the plants and animals in Haeckel’s illustrations. It blooms on the day 1 (2004). Via [...]

Asteridae. Jennifer Maestre is another artist who claims Ernst Haeckel’s Art Forms in Nature as an influence. Asteridae is part of a series of works made from pencils, while Dreaming comprises part of another series using nails and other materials to create what might be organic forms. Dreaming. • An interview with Jennifer Maestre Previously [...]

Dans la Lune (2007). Dans la Lune (2007). “Il est dans la lune” can be translated as “He’s got his head in the clouds,” or “He’s on another planet.” Dans la Lune is a perfect title because in my work I try to create an imaginary place that relates to our longings for a better, [...]

“Mirage in time—image of long-vanish’d pre-human city.” A couple pieces of news to catch up with here, both Lovecraft-related which is very apt for the month of Halloween. The first is the work I gave a teaser view of in August, a commission for Maison d’Ailleurs, the Museum of Science Fiction, Utopia and Extraordinary Journeys [...]

One of my works graces the cover of an American institution this month with the appearance of my HP Lovecraft portrait on the August issue of FATE magazine (volume 60, number 8, issue 688, if you must know). This is for an article about Lovecraft’s occult connections and I believe they’ve also used one of [...]

Octopi and squid from Kunstformen der Natur (1899–1904) by Ernst Haeckel. Celebrate Darwin’s birthday by looking at Ernst Haeckel’s wonderful prints. Previously on { feuilleton } • The glass menagerie

Not the play by Tennessee Williams, rather the glass sculptures of sea creatures by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. Leopold (1822–1895) and Rudolf (1857–1939) Blaschka were a father and son partnership, originally from Bohemia. Their work making spectacular glass models of natural history objects began in 1857, in Germany. Rudolf joined his father in business in [...]