{"id":11626,"date":"2012-06-26T03:15:59","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T02:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=11626"},"modified":"2020-02-20T22:28:38","modified_gmt":"2020-02-20T22:28:38","slug":"green-pipes-poems-and-pictures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2012\/06\/26\/green-pipes-poems-and-pictures\/","title":{"rendered":"Green Pipes: Poems and Pictures"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jpf01.jpg\"<\/p>\n

This is a strange book. Green Pipes: Poems and Pictures<\/em> (1929) was written and illustrated by Joseph Rous Paget-Fredericks (1903\u20131963), a man better known these days for a substantial collection of memorabilia and archive material related to 20th-century dance.\u00a0Paget-Fredericks studied with L\u00e9on Bakst then went on to create his own costume designs<\/a> as well as producing some books for children of which this is an example. In style the poems aim at AA Milne’s When We Were Very Young<\/em> but succumb to tweeness with a superfluity of fairies and pixies. At first glance the illustrations seem just as twee until you notice remarkable details such as costumes and foliage created from a wealth of disconnected lines and squiggles. The drawing of a Smoke Sprite is closer to something by Alastair<\/a> than EH Shepard, while the Snow Fairy is the vaguest outline in a dress composed of circles, lines and dots. The Green Pipes of the title are the pipes of Pan, and so we get a late eruption of that peculiar flourishing of Pan Mania that extends from the 1890s to the 1930s. A book of children’s poetry isn’t the place you’d expect to encounter flower children kneeling before a piping faun but after the openly Pantheist chapter<\/a> of The Wind in the Willows<\/em> anything is possible. Far more out of place among all the fairies is a painting of a pirate brandishing a bloody cutlass. And what are we to make of the lines at the end of Elfin Children<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Then from the windowed heights we stream
\nBy silent starlit mire\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Starlit Mire<\/em><\/a> (1911) was a book of epigrams by James Bertram & F. Russell illustrated by Austin Osman Spare (with a head of Pan blocked onto the cover). It’s not at all a book for children so the occurrence of that phrase in Paget-Fredericks’ poem is very surprising. Is “starlit mire” a quote that precedes the Bertram & Russell book? Please leave a comment if you know.<\/p>\n

Read Green Pipes<\/em> online here<\/a> or download it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"jpf02.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"jpf03.jpg\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"jpf04.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"jpf05.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"jpf06.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"jpf07.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"jpf08.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"jpf09.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"jpf10.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"jpf11.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"jpf12.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"jpf13.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"jpf14.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"jpf15.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The illustrators archive<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The Piper at the Gates of Dawn<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Great God Pan<\/a>
\n\u2022 Peake\u2019s Pan<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a strange book. Green Pipes: Poems and Pictures (1929) was written and illustrated by Joseph Rous Paget-Fredericks (1903\u20131963), a man better known these days for a substantial collection of memorabilia and archive material related to 20th-century dance.\u00a0Paget-Fredericks studied with L\u00e9on Bakst then went on to create his own costume designs as well as … Continue reading “Green Pipes: Poems and Pictures”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,42,56,4,48,16],"tags":[3816,2469,3817,3819,1293,3818,3815,900],"class_list":["post-11626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-dance","category-design","category-illustrators","category-occult","tag-aa-milne","tag-austin-osman-spare","tag-eh-shepard","tag-f-russell","tag-hans-henning-voigt","tag-james-bertram","tag-joseph-rous-paget-fredericks","tag-leon-bakst"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-31w","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}