A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Typography
Another short but sweet Internet Archive upload, The Book of Ornamental Alphabets (1914) by Freeman Delamotte. The designs are a variety of capitals and alphabets from medieval and later manuscripts. At least one page of this I recognise from a Pepin Press collection of similar ornamental types.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Paul Franck’s calligraphy
• Gramato-graphices
• John Bickham’s Fables and other short poems
• Letters and Lettering
• Studies in Pen Art
• Flourishes
Some of the most extravagantly flourished capitals you’ll see, from another of those books with an unwieldy title, Kunstrichtige Schreibart : allerhand Versalie[n] oder AnfangsBuchstabe[n] der teütschen, lateinischen und italianischen Schrifften aus unterschiedlichen Meistern der edlen Schreibkunst zusammen getragen (1655). The authors are credited as Paul Franck, Paul Fürst and Christoph Gerhard but it’s Franck’s name I know from a book of type designs, and it was a search for better examples of these letters which led me to the Internet Archive who have scans of the entire book. This is the place where European lettering design approaches the bravura elaborations of Arabic calligraphy.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Gramato-graphices
• John Bickham’s Fables and other short poems
• Letters and Lettering
• Studies in Pen Art
• Flourishes
Aladdin Sane (1973). Cover photo by Brian Duffy who died this week.
• Among the obituaries this week: artist Louise Bourgeois; poet and partner of Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky; film director Joseph Strick, a man who dared to film James Joyce’s Ulysses; photographer Brian Duffy.
• The dustbin of art history: “Why is so much contemporary art awful? We’re living through the death throes of the modernist project—and this isn’t the first time that greatness has collapsed into decadence.” Admirable sentiments but galleries and dealers have far too much invested in the corrupt edifice to let it collapse any time soon.
• Edinburgh film festival to screen ‘lost and forgotten’ British movies including the director’s cut of Jerry Cornelius film The Final Programme.
Delectable Bawdville burlesque boy Chris “Go-Go” Harder. Via EVB who have more pics.
• Homobody by Rio Safari, “a scrappy diy zine about queerness”. Obliquely related: Lizzy the Lezzie, animations at the Sundance Channel.
• Richard Norris aka Time and Space Machine puts together a psychedelic mixtape for FACT. Fab stuff.
• Diamanda Galás has a message for critics: “Stick to reviewing plant life and leave the Witches alone.”
• Brion Gysin: Dream Machine will be the first US survey of Gysin’s work in NYC next month.
• Geeta Dayal’s study of Another Green World by Brian Eno reviewed at Ballardian.
• For type-heads: font anatomy wallpaper by Sigurdur Armannsson.
• If it was my home: visualising the BP oil disaster.
• Antony Gormley’s Breathing Room III.
• The Paris Review has a new blog.
• Bizarre juxtaposition of the week: John Martyn’s sublime Small Hours with, er… The Clangers.
Being post number 2,000 here at {feuilleton}. The page above is a sample from Monograms & Ciphers (1906) by AA Turbayne at the trusty Internet Archive.
I’ll take the opportunity here to apologise for the continuing flakiness of my web connection. The advantage of WordPress is independence from the shackles of Blogger and co. but this can leave you at the mercy of webhosts with inadequate or shoddy resources. I intend changing host at some point but have been far too busy of late to deal with the matter. As always, your patience is appreciated. Thanks.
I have a couple of books with examples of medieval capitals like these, each letter being an amalgam of people, animals or (in the case of the example below) duelling knights. These are from Gothische Alphabete (1897), a book by Jaro Springer at the excellent University of Heidelberg which has the whole volume available as a PDF or as scans of individual pages.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Letters and Lettering