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top row: The Division Bell by Pink Floyd; A Rush of Blood to the Head by Coldplay.
bottom row: London Calling by The Clash; Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield.
The Royal Mail follows its series of British Design Classics postage stamps with a series dedicated to what they call “classic” album covers. The design classics in [...]

Large E-Coli.
Or art as virus…. Just because micro-organisms can make us seriously ill doesn’t mean they can’t be beautiful. Luke Jerram’s glass renderings of some of the most deadly examples are on display at the Smithfield Gallery, London, until October 3rd.
The sculptures were designed in consultation with virologists from the University of Bristol using a [...]

The Gamelatron at Galapagos Art Space March 2009. Photo by Gisella Sorrentino.
A laptop-controlled gamelan orchestra by Zemi17 aka A. Taylor Kuffner. See it in operation here. (Is it Gamelatron or GamelaTron? Their spellings differ…)
The GamelaTron is the fruit of a collaboration between The League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR) and the composer Zemi17: A. [...]

The Glass Chair.
Today’s glass artists continue to astonish. Andy Paiko’s one-off creation above is a chair whose vitrines contain a rhesus monkey skull, a piece of octopus coral, a murex spiny trumpet shell, the skeleton of a rat, and a mountain lion skull. The piece below contains a 24 carat gold-plated coyote skull with the [...]

Blepharopsis mendica nymph.
More insect art and some really gorgeous creations. Geoffrey Haberman also makes silver insects but I much prefer the brass ones. From four pages of Flickr photos including an incredible mantis horde.

Idolomantis diabolica adult male.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Sipho Mabona’s origami insects
• Kitchen insects
• Elizabeth Goluch’s precious metal insects
• Laura Zindel’s ceramics
• [...]

Praying Mantis (2008).
Folded from a single sheet. Amazing. Lots more insects and other constructions on her Flickr page.And while we’re on the subject, Between the Folds is a documentary about origami artists currently doing the rounds of film festivals. Via Design Observer.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Kitchen insects
• Elizabeth Goluch’s precious metal insects
• Laura Zindel’s [...]

Speculative designs for kitchen utensils by artist and designer Sayaka Yamamoto.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Elizabeth Goluch’s precious metal insects
• Kelly McCallum’s insect art
• Thomas Paul’s sealife
• Laura Zindel’s ceramics
• The art of Jo Whaley
• The art of Philippe Wolfers, 1858–1929
• Lalique’s dragonflies
• Lucien Gaillard
• Insect Lab

The Royal Mail issues this splendid set of stamps next month, celebrating their choice of “the greatest achievements of British design”. The set was designed by HGV with photography by Jason Tozer and regular readers will note two { feuilleton } cult items among the selection, the Penguin book jacket and Harry Beck’s London Underground [...]

A 40X close-up of Chrysochroa fulgens, the iridescent Jewel Beetle, showing part of the insect’s eye. A stereomicroscopy photo by Charles Krebs, and one of the winners in the 2008 Olympus Bioscapes Digital Imaging Competition. Scientific American has larger images.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• How many leaf beetles can dance on the head of a [...]

Dragonfly (Green Darner) sterling silver, 18k & 14k gold, brass, ceramit, moonstone.
Two of Elizabeth Goluch’s unique—and no doubt expensive—sculptures. She also does a range of jewellery.
Another fabulous find from Fabulon.

Praying Mantis, sterling silver, copper, 14K & 18K gold.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Kelly McCallum’s insect art
• The art of Jo Whaley
• The art of Philippe [...]

One beetle, it seems. Klaus Bolte’s 40 X photograph is one of National Geographic’s Best Microscopic Images of 2008.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Jo Whaley
• Endangered insects postage stamps

Venom (2003).
The work of Angelo Filomeno, an Italian artist based in New York, is just the kind of thing I like to see: insects, skulls and bones in a luscious presentation. The sculpture below is made of glass while the flat works are silk embroidery with crystals as part of the decoration. There’s a [...]

In addition to insects, Kelly McCallum also has birds filled with clockwork mechanisms, stuffed animals being eaten by gilded grubs, jewellery carved from human bones, and more. Plus a quote from the Prince of Quotation, Walter Benjamin: “The grey film of dust covering things has become their best part.”
Via 3quarksdaily.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Walmor [...]

The Royal Mail continues to rifle popular culture for suitable anniversary subjects, this week following its series of James Bond postage stamps with stamp sets celebrating the 50th anniversaries of Hammer’s first run of horror films and the Carry On series. I don’t think I’d use the word “celebration” in the case of the [...]

left: Small Hercules Beetle Vase, Large Harlequin Beetle Vase.
right: Small Lady Beetle Vase, Large Scarab Beetle Vase.
Ceramic art by Laura Zindel. Good to see that arthropods are no longer such a taboo for home furnishings.

Via Fabulon.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Jo Whaley
• Endangered insects postage stamps
• Robert Lang’s origami insects
• Lalique’s dragonflies
• [...]

Remarkable steam-powered engines by glass artist Bandhu Scott Dunham. The one above is based on 19th century designs. Others are Dunham’s own developments which include contraptions to move glass marbles up and down a series of corkscrew paths. Still pictures don’t do these things justice, best to look at two short QT movies here and [...]

Papilio ulysses (2000).
Best. Insect Art. Ever. From a series entitled The Theater of Insects, also the name of a book devoted to Ms Whaley’s photographs which will appear from Chronicle Books later this year.
The photographs in this book are fantastic field illustrations. While the insects in these images are real, the backgrounds are imaginary altered [...]

Adonis Blue Butterfly.
Beautiful stamps for the second in a Royal Mail series intended to bring attention to endangered species. These will be issued on Tuesday and are designed by Andrew Ross using photography from the Natural History Museum. The Independent notes the irony of the Royal Mail printing these even as they’re building a [...]

Maléficia (1905).
Much of the jewellery and sculpture produced by Phillipe Wolfers demonstrates the tendency of Art Nouveau and decorative Symbolism to evolve from Decadence to full-blown Gothic. The sinister recurs in Wolfers’ creations whether in the form of baleful females such as Malèficia and his Medusa pendant, or in the shape of bats, insects [...]

Black Widow; one uncut square of Origamido paper (2003).
I’ve been doing origami on and off since I was about 11 years old but the real measure of the art is whether you can invent your own folds rather than simply copying other people’s. This is something I’ve never managed since you have to devote [...]