{books} – Page 408 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 4

Will at A Journey Round My Skull turned up this hand-coloured picture from Ronald Balfour’s illustrated Rubáiyát some of whose other drawings were featured here recently. That distant volcano is a curious detail. Related: Golden Age Comic Book Stories posted plates from Willy Pogány’s edition.

• Authors on authors: China Miéville on JG Ballard; Rodrigo Fresán on Jorge Luis Borges; AS Byatt on Lewis Carroll.

• Events: Alan Moore & Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley present Simultaneous Conjugation of Four Spirits in a Room at the Laing Art Gallery on March 13th, 2010 (via Arthur); in October Weirdstone will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.

• New blogs: Wonder Kabinet / Wunderkammer, “curiosities, ephemera, and fragments from The Cutting Room Floor and Evan J Peterson”; Pencil Tool, a Tumblr by Charity Pomaybo; and another Tumblr from Mountain*7.

• Perversity Think Tank is a new book from Supervert. Download it for free or order the delicious limited edition.

• The Casual Optimist lists 10+ Flickr Groups for Book Design and Inspiration.

• Via BibliOdyssey: 400 woodcuts by Eric Gill.

• “At least in self-abuse / There’s a little dignity…” Song of the week was Hands 2 Take by The Flying Lizards from their second album, Fourth Wall (1981). I bought this when it came out but hadn’t listened to it for years. Thrilling, urgent stuff with the fabulous Patti Palladin on vocals. Play loud.

There’s something about Alice

There’s something about Alice | AS Byatt on Lewis Carroll.

Les Papillons, métamorphoses terrestres des peuples de l’air

Illustrations by Pierre Amédée Varin (1818–1883) of the butterfly people from Les Papillons, métamorphoses terrestres des peuples de l’air (1862), a book by Eugène Nus and Antony Méray. These are from an Amédée Varin set at Flickr which also features some of Varin’s vegetable beings. Butterfly people have been turning up in my own work recently but you’ll have to wait to see those.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Yannis Tsarouchis, 1910–1989
• Butterfly women
• Saint-Aubin’s Butterfly People

Heinrich Vogeler’s illustrated Wilde

The Fisherman and his Soul.

It’s always satisfying when a search intended to satisfy curiosity turns up more than you expect. The subject in this case was German artist Heinrich Vogeler (1872–1942) and the surprise was finding these illustrations for a German collection of Oscar Wilde stories lurking in the archives of the Visual Telling of Stories site. The stock of imagery there is substantial and wide-ranging but the search facility stopped working a while ago and has now been removed so you either have to hit things at random or hope for happy accidents such as this. Vogeler’s volume dates from 1911 and while his draughtsmanship isn’t as assured as some of his contemporaries there’s enough going on to make me want to see more of his illustration work.

The Young King.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
• The Oscar Wilde archive

Weekend links 3

It’s a curious feeling when a drawing which is nearly 26 years old makes it out into the world. The image above is the cover of a new 7″ single release, Dominion of Avyaktam by metal band Orator, the picture being something I drew in 1984 entitled Mahakala after the Tibetan deity which it depicts. The inspiration was the cover of another recording, a Nonesuch Explorer album, Tibetan Buddhism – Tantras Of Gyütö: Mahakala, and also the track Mahakala by 23 Skidoo from their 1983 album The Culling is Coming. The skull is drawn from a real one I was given. Looking at this today none of the elements seem to work together—and the landscape stuff looks like a lazy way of filling in space—but it’s nice to see it find a home. Dominion of Avyaktam is out now on the Legion of Death label.

• Surprise of the week: two books I’ve worked on were nominated for Nebula Awards, Jeff VanderMeer’s Finch, and Kage Baker’s The Hotel Under the Sand whose interior I designed.

• More music: a recording of Paul Schütze’s Third Site played live in 1999 (with Clive Bell, Raoul Björkenheim, Simon Hopkins & Thomas Köner’s voice) is now available as a free download on his website. More Schütze: Paul Schütze & Simon Hopkins playing a set at the Horbar in Hamburg on December 28, 2009.

• The incredible pinscreen animations of Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker are finally available on DVD. Also new to DVD, Alan Bennett at the BBC, a four-disc set of some of his TV plays including a particular favourite of mine, his Kafkaesque drama The Insurance Man.

• More Ghost Box business: Jon Brooks aka The Advisory Circle has a blog. And Ghost Box’s Jim Jupp was interviewed recently by Peter Bebergal at Mystery Theater. Related (forgot to mention this last week): The ASDA Mix, a great mixtape of spooky retro weirdness by Moon Wiring Club available for free at The Wire.

• The trailer for Mellodrama, a documentary about the Mellotron by Dianna Dillworth.

• The Parajanov Festival will be screening some of the director’s films in London and Bristol.

• Lots of weird and wonderful exhibits at the ~Wunderkammer~.