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Older illustrated books often suffer at the hands of owners or a certain breed of iniquitous antique dealer who razor out their colour plates in order to frame them as prints. The Internet Archive has two copies of The Year’s at the Spring; An Anthology of Recent Poetry (1920) edited by Lettice D’Oyly Walters, and illustrated [...]

A little something for the season of strong drink. Harry Clarke’s books command high prices in their original editions yet two of the costliest items in the Clarke bibliography are a pair of promotional booklets the artist illustrated for Jameson & Son’s Irish Whiskey: A History of a Great House in 1924, and Elixir of [...]

First paperback edition of Titus Groan, 1968. If you’re British then, no, it isn’t what you think. Having mentioned my hometown of Blackpool yesterday there’s one detail about the town I usually regard as an annex of Hell which, if not quite a saving grace, raises it into some lesser locus of perdition. There are [...]

Illustration by Mervyn Peake for The Sphinx by Oscar Wilde (1949). The centenary of writer, artist and poet Mervyn Peake is being celebrated this year with a number of events in the UK. Mervyn Peake: A Centenary Celebration is a small exhibition of Peake’s drawings which has been running since April at the Pallant House [...]

The Eternal Idol by Auguste Rodin. Continuing the delve into back numbers of Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, the German periodical of art and decoration. Volume 21 covers the period from October 1907 to March 1908, and the highlight of this issue is a feature on the black-and-white art of Julius Klinger, an artist whose drawings [...]

Another winter garden, this addition to the Institute of the Ursulines, a Catholic school in Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Waver, Belgium, is a lot smaller than previous examples but is celebrated for its beautiful Art Nouveau-styled stained glass canopy. The winter garden was added to the main building in 1900 and—surprisingly—no one seems to know who the architect was. [...]

Last year saw an exploration here of the fecund pages of Jugend magazine so in the same spirit I’m embarking on a serial delve into Jugend‘s more serious contemporary Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration. I’ve made a couple of posts in this direction already but these were done before I’d had a chance to look properly [...]

A Delightful Page in the Record of My Existence. This picture popped up at Chateau Thombeau a few days ago and it’s also been circulating in Tumblr’s recursive labyrinth. The very obvious debt to Harry Clarke’s black-and-white style caught my attention, especially to the artist’s Poe illustrations with the reclining woman being a blatant swipe [...]

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Harry Clarke. Some samples from a collection of mostly black-and-white drawing at the Internet Archive, Modern Book Illustrators and Their Work (1914), edited by C. Geoffrey Holme & Ernest G. Halton. This was an illustration review produced by The Studio magazine and in this edition happens to feature [...]

And so to the master. Harry Clarke’s illustrated edition of Tales of Mystery and Imagination was published by Harrap in 1919, with a new edition following in 1923 that featured an additional series of colour plates. I can’t imagine anyone ever producing a better illustrated version of Poe than Clarke managed, the morbid quality which [...]

More Ludwigiana. Schloss Linderhof was Ludwig II of Bavaria’s miniature Versailles at Oberammergau and is a key location in Visconti’s film about the King. The house itself is a riot of gilded rococo which isn’t really to my taste but you can make your own judgement by taking a tour at the palace website or [...]

I mentioned Harry Clarke’s stained glass work last year since Flickr now has some decent photos of Clarke’s incredible window designs. Published this month is Strangest Genius: The Stained Glass of Harry Clarke by Lucy Costigan and Michael Cullen, the first proper book-length study of the windows and other stained glass work produced by the [...]

The first issue of yesterday’s arts and crafts magazine Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration includes an article about Melchior Lechter, a German artist and designer whose illustration work I knew from books by gay poet Stefan George but who seems unjustly neglected by fin de siècle art histories. The reminder prompted me to search a bit [...]

Bellgrove, young Titus and Barquentine by Mervyn Peake. Case designed by Robert Hollingsworth. I’d thought about posting the covers of my boxed set of Gormenghast paperbacks a couple of years back when there was a flurry of blogospheric attention being given to Penguin cover designs…thought about it then never got round to it. The reason [...]

The Good Ship Ménage À Trois (2008). New York artist Joseph Cavalieri‘s stained glass work using Simpsons characters received a flurry of blogospheric attention recently. Of more interest for me is his gay-themed panels like the one above which show a different approach to the medium from that taken by Diego Tolomelli. Gormenghast (2009). And [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Sturminster Newton, South aisle window (detail). More from one of Ireland’s great artists. Harry Clarke’s book illustration is oft-reproduced but his stained glass work remains little seen unless you visit the churches where the windows are installed or find a copy of Nicola Gordon Bowe’s out-of-print monograph. Happily there’s a Flickr group who’ve done a [...]

Las Meninas (1656) by Diego Velázquez. The sight of one of Picasso’s many versions of Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour) by Velázquez earlier this week prompts this post. An endlessly fascinating painting whose influence runs through three hundred years of art history. That influence isn’t so surprising if you consider this as a painter’s [...]

left: The Kiss; right: Male nude. Stained glass by IKO, aka Italian artist Diego Tolomelli. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The gay artists archive Previously on { feuilleton } • The art of Lucio Bubacco