{design} – Page 225 – { feuilleton }

The House of Orchids by George Sterling

Do all roads lead to the Internet Archive? Not really but I keep ending up there when I happen to discover an interesting old book and wonder whether they have a PDF of the volume in question. The volume for consideration today, The House of Orchids, is a 1911 collection of verse by George Sterling (1869–1926), an American but another of those writers whose poetry looked to Decadent London and Paris for its flavour, hence the Wildean title, and, it should be said, the cover design. I haven’t been able to find an artist credit for this; if anyone knows who was responsible, please leave a comment.

Many of the books at Archive.org are unremarkable library editions but this is a rare exception, being a gift to the University of California of writer Ambrose Bierce, Sterling’s idol and the person to whom he writes the above thanks and a dedication. Bierce praised Sterling’s work but must have passed the book on fairly soon after receiving it since he famously disappeared in Mexico two years later. Or maybe his library was passed to the university after his disappearance? Whatever the answer, this edition contains another curious feature in the form of a pasted-in newspaper clipping from 1926 concerning the death in mysterious circumstances of Sterling himself at San Francisco’s Bohemian Club. The general supposition is that he killed himself with a vial of cyanide he was in the habit of carrying around. One of Sterling’s young poetic protégés at the time The House of Orchids appeared was Clark Ashton Smith whose first volume of verse, The Star-Treader, and Other Poems, was published a year later. That book and another of Smith’s titles is also available at Archive.org, as I noted in June. Also there, and of particular {feuilleton} interest, is Sterling’s The Evanescent City, a paean to San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. (This site has scans of the text and photos.)

George-Sterling.org is a site devoted to the writer which includes many of his poems and other texts. Looking at his lengthy piece from 1907, A Wine of Wizardry, you can see what it was about his work that so appealed to Clark Ashton Smith and others.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Odes and Sonnets by Clark Ashton Smith
• Clark Ashton Smith book covers
• The Evanescent City

Two Brides

Ah, sweet serendipity… What are the odds, dear reader, of two blogospheric friends posting equally splendid pictures of everyone’s favourite hand-stitched and reanimated woman within days of each other? (It helps that Evan P and Monsieur Thombeau share a number of interests but let’s not spoil the moment.) The Gray’s-like dissection above is the work of illustrator Martin Ansin, while the painting below is by Michelle Mia Araujo, or Mia, as she prefers. Both artists have produced a quantity of other work which demands your attention. As for James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein, it is, of course, one of the great cultural artefacts of the previous century; if you’ve never seen it there’s a Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester-shaped hole in your life which needs to be filled without delay.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Mask of Fu Manchu
• Berni Wrightson’s Frankenstein

Tranquillo Marangoni bookplates

Occulta (1949).

Two of the many bookplates produced by Italian artist Tranquillo Marangoni (1912–1992). The official site (in Italian) has three pages of ex libris work as well as further pages devoted to his woodcut book illustrations, postage stamp designs and other graphic productions.

Eros x Agapi (1949).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Book-plates of To-day
• Louis Rhead bookplates
• Pratt Libraries Ex Libris Collection
• The Evil Orchid Bookplate Contest
• David Becket’s bookplates

Weekend links 28

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The Expansion of the First Great Ornamental Age: 3 Distances (2009) by Seher Shah.

• Great Female Artists? Think Karachi. “One reason for the unusually high ratio of female artists in Pakistan has to do with the fact that the art industry has not traditionally been viewed as a lucrative business by men, says South Asian art historian Savita Apte, who administers the internationally renowned Abraaj Capital Art Prize. Until very recently, creatively inclined males tended to focus on fields such as advertising or illustration, leaving the art field wide open for some very talented women.” Related: artist Seher Shah (and also here).

• Hardformat looks at the luxury/collectors/whatever edition of the forthcoming Brian Eno album. “What’s the music like?” Colin asks. Indeed.

• Strange Flowers is “a celebration of the most extraordinary, eccentric and unfairly forgotten figures of the past 200 years”.

• Warsaw Warble: Illustration and design in Poland, 1917 to 1938. More marvels from A Journey Round My Skull.

• Strange Attractor hosts talks at London’s Little Shoppe of Horrors throughout the autumn.

• Barney Bubbles in Mojo and more details of the new edition of Paul Gorman’s BB book.

• A blog devoted to all things having to do with Howard Pyle (1853–1911).

• Erik Davis on Dreaming, Writing, Philip K Dick and Lovecraft.

• 10 Reading Revolutions Before E-Books.

• Secular Exorcisms by Evan J Peterson.

• RIP Jean Benoît.

• Street haikus.

• I Put A Spell On You (1965) by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins; I Put A Spell On You (1965) by Nina Simone; I Put A Spell On You (2001) by Natacha Atlas.

Mucha’s Zodiac

Another zodiac poster. Alphonse Mucha’s design was a calendar produced for arts review La Plume in 1896, and typically with Mucha great attention is paid to the decorative details. Close examination reveals a sunflower behind the sun symbol in the lower left while poppies accompany the symbol of the moon on the right.

Mucha was also commissioned for the Exposition Universelle four years later, with work including these designs promoting the Austrian exhibits. This seems surprising when it was his work in France which made his name but there was a great deal of national prestige at stake in 1900 and the French authorities wouldn’t have wanted a foreign artist involved with their official art. Mucha was also a foreigner to the Austrians, of course, but they regarded him with more benevolence, and their decorative arts exhibit included one of his carpet designs. If it was galling to be ignored by France he at least had the satisfaction of seeing many of the participating nations showing work in the Art Nouveau style which he’d done so much to evolve.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Le Palais de l’Optique, 1900
• Owen Wood’s Zodiac
• Palladini’s Zodiac
• Exposition Universelle films
• Exposition jewellery
• Exposition Universelle catalogue
• Exposition Universelle publications
• Exposition cornucopia
• Return to the Exposition Universelle
• The Palais Lumineux
• Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
• Exposition Universelle, 1900
• The Palais du Trocadéro