An Antique Treasure Chest

Illustration from medieval French manuscript

I love how I can always rely on the web for interesting discoveries and pleasant surprises.

 From awesome artists I had never heard about, to wonderful blogs and information 

resources, I can find it all in the comfort of my studio, at any time I please, for the small

 price of an ADSL connection. I try to remember not to take this for granted, and to be 

grateful to the countless people who in their personal way contribute to this incredible 

and ever growing public repository of knowledge and art. Having worked in the past as an

 iconographic researcher in the publishing field, I know well how hard it used to be to 

find images for specific projects without having to pay high prices to agencies or spend 

hours looking around in dusty bookstores (by the way, I do enjoy dusty bookstores).

Medieval illustration from beekeeping manuscript

Blue kingfisher and lilies from Livre de Fleur, 1620

Illustration by Mark Catesby from History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, 1780

This morning, when thanks to Tumblr I came upon vintageprintable.com, I reacted with 

the classic "How come I haven't seen this before?". The website, as the name implies, 

hosts a huge collection of downloadable and printable public domain images. The animal

 section alone contains hundreds of variously catalogued images, from medieval

 bestiaries to Buffon, from Japanese prints to 1960s stamps. The kind of stuff one can 

usually find in Dover books, great for collages, crafts, and overall inspiration, but in a 

free digital format. The project is the brainchild of Swivelchair, a biopharma professional

 with the hobby of curating out-of-copyright scientific illustration.

Elephant and Zebra from Infants cabinet of Birds and Beasts, 1820

Echidna from Complements de Buffon, 1838

Ink wash illustration from Jean Baptiste Vérany's

Mèmoire sur deux nouvelles espèces de Céphalopodes trouvées dans l'océan, 1839

Butterflies from Oriental Entomology by J. O. Westwood, 1848

Indian snake charmers, 18th-19th century

Plate from Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904

(one of my favorite illustrated books ever)

Cover of A Cat Alphabet by Louis Wain, 1910

Brothers Grimm German stamp, 1963

All images in this post are a semi-random selection of things found at vintage printable.

Go take a look and try not to get lost; there's a lot more to see.

Carnival Animals

As mentioned in a previous post, I recently visited my hometown of Viareggio 

on the Tuscan coast to participate in the local Carnival festivities. The main events 

of the month long extravaganza are five parades of huge allegorical papier-maché floats

 (up to twenty meters tall) and masks accompanied by musical bands along the large

 beachside promenade known as "La Passeggiata". At the end of the festival, a jury awards

 prizes to the best floats. Started as a local celebration in 1873, the Carnival gradually

became one of Italy's most famous. Nowadays it attracts over 1.000.000 visitors every year.

This year's winning float, the ecological Earth, the only mother by Roberto Vannucci

Detail from Stolen love by Massimo Breschi, thanks to Luciano Castro on flickr

The themes represented on floats and masks range from political satire and social 

commentary to caricatures of celebrities and pure flights of fancy. This year's subjects

 included Obama, a variety of Berlusconis, a Metropolis-inspired automaton, a spooky 

Michael Jackson, and the monster above symbolizing violence against women. 

The characters are animated by various workers hosted in their complex wooden structures. 

A number of singers and dancers in costume also contribute to the floats' lively appearance.

Second place was awarded to Dance of the Dragon by Verlanti and F.lli Bonetti,

an allegory of China's rising power. I especially enjoyed the special effects: glowing eyes

 (a popular feature this year) and smoke coming out of the dragon's mouth.

A group of masks that really caught my eye was Fish and Plastic by Roberto De Leo, 

7 papier maché aquatic creations decorated with plastic cups, straws, cutlery, 

bottles and other materials.

In recent times there's been quite a bit of experimentation with new forms, techniques

 and materials. Last year my dear friends Gilbert Lebigre and Corinne Roger, a couple 

of artists who moved from France to Viareggio thirty years ago to follow their passion 

for papier maché, built a float featuring an awesome group of geese covered in feathers

 made of plastic bags. Their latest production, inspired by Italy's growing 

government-fueled anti-immigration paranoia, was also insanely great.

A World Apart

More goodness from Russia, in tune with the chilling Siberian winds blowing through town.

Enter the bizarre worlds created by Ivan Maximovic's imagination and meet the funny, surreal creatures that inhabit them.

Monday Matticchio - Beautiful Butterfly in a Box

Happy women's day!

Sunday Safari - Up in smoke

Caution: this post may be hazardous to your health.

Animal tabagism is a more significant problem than previously estimated.

Indian oversized matchbox label, thanks again to Wackystuff

A. Fredericks,cover of Maraboe Vertelt, 1944

Herbert Leupin, Get your Easter gifts at Globus, 1945

Waldemar Swierzy, Smoking monkey, 1964

Illustration by Květa Pacovská for Hodina Modrych Slonu, 1969,

thanks to the encyclopedic A Journey Round my Skull

Polish matchbox label, thanks to Shailesh Chavda's beautiful flickr collections

Illustration by Greg Clarke

Horst Lemke, illustration from Fahre mit durchs ABC, 1965,

thanks to illuopa

Andrea Rivola, Ceci n'est pas un flamant

Chamo, Smoking peacock

Kevin Waldron, Lion

Ben Newman, Carlo the homeless

Stefan Glerum, Poespas 2010

Animalsleepstories, Tiger smoking

The Russian Ark of Yuri Vasnetsov

Keeping with the theme of Russian folklore, I am very glad to share another great illustrator of the Soviet era.

 Yuri Vasnetsov was born in Vyatka in 1900. In 1921 he moved to Petrograd, where he studied at the Higher 

Art Technical Studios (Vhuteina) and later perfected his skills at the State Institute of Artisic Culture (Ginhuke)

under Kasimir Malevich. His paintings of the 1920's–early 30's combine elements of Suprematism and Primitivism.

Still life with chessboard, 1926-28

While still a student, he began to cooperate with the state publishing house Gosizdat

 headed by Vladimir Lebedev. With Charushin, Pachomov and Kurdov, he was part of the group 

of young artists who Lebedev most favored and had high expectations on. 

For this reason, he was often harshly critical of their works, and they in turn were quite afraid 

of showing him their sketches. Vasnetsov started to develop his own peculiar style, 

less stylized than his colleagues and deeply influenced by traditional Russian popular art. 

The resulting artworks are both sweet and bold, popular and refined, traditional and eccentric.

Wax-crayon illustration for Boloto (The bog) by Vitaly Bianki, 1930

The drawings in this book were the result of Vasnetsov's long research into the life of bog inhabitants.

Page from Putanica (Disorder) by Korney Chukovsky, 1934

Cover of Tri medvedja (The three Bears) by Lev Tolstoj, 1935

Illustration from The little humpbacked horse by Piotr Yershov, 1935

Page from Pjat'desjat porosjat (Fifty pigs) by Korney Chukovsky, 1936

Page from Kradenoe solnce (The stolen sun) by Korney Chukovskij, 1936

These early books brought him a reputation as one of Russia's leading artists of children's books. 

In this period he also created lithographies using the same fairy tale themes as the illustrations. 

Due to the war, in 1941 Vasnetsov was evacuated to Perm, where he worked in the puppet theater, 

then in 1943-45 he moved to Zagorsk where he became chief designer at the Institute of toys.

Cover of Russian fairy tales

In the postwar years Vasnetsov continued to be very active as a book illustrator, 

working on children's stories, fairy tales and folklore collections. Among his most famous late works 

are the illustrations for the books Ladushki and Rainbow arc. Vasnetsov was also a painter all his life, 

although he did not show publicly his works for fear of being accused of "formalism". He died in 1973, 

and in 1979 the State Russian Museum held a retrospective exhibition of his art.

Cover of Animal friendships, 1989 edition

Cover of Russian tales, 1974 edition

Two iIllustrations from Ladushki, Russian rhymes and tales for little ones, 1964,

thanks to Flamenconut's amazing flickr collection,

where you can see more artworks from this lovely book.

Cover and illustration from Rainbow arc. Russian folk songs, tales, nursery rhymes, 1969

You can check out Animalarium's other posts on Soviet children's books illustrators

Vera Ermolayeva, Vladimir Lebedev, Yevgeny Charushin and Nikolai Tyrsa.