Monday Matticchio - Tiger in the Snow

Sunday Safari - Goodbye Tiger

1960's wooden Tiger wall plaque, originally from a French Circus, at Fears and Kahn

We are approaching the end of The Year of the Tiger 

and I wanted to salute these majestic, wonderful creatures 

who unfortunately are constantly under threat of extinction.

Long live the Tiger!

André Hellé, Grosses bêtes and petites bêtes, 1912,

thanks to the always wonderful A Journey Round My Skull

  Sergio Ruffolo, Tigre homemade greeting card

 Meg Hunt for the Cloudy Collection

Celestino Piatti, illustration for Der goldene Apfel: Eine Geschichte, 1970

found thanks to a lovely post about tigers on Booktryst

Cathie Bleck, Tiger

 Ian McArthur, Tiger

Jan Młodożeniec, Tygrysek, 1961 

Sebastiano Ranchetti, Little Tiger

 Atsushi Hara

Dale Maxey, illustration from The Wild and woolly animal book, 1966,  

thanks to Bonito Club

 Pierre Bevès, Le tigre en bois, 1961, thanks to maptitefabrique

Antonio Ligabue, Tigre con ragno, 1953

 Józef Wilkon, Ksiega Dzungli (the Jungle book)

Avant-Garde in the Nursery

Polish avant-garde artist Franciszka Themerson (1907-1988) illustrated the delightful 

My First Nursery Book in 1947. Franciszka was a woman of many talents, whose 

endeavours included painting, illustration, graphic design, stage design, 

art direction, publishing, film-making and marionette theatre. 

In many of these projects she was accompanied by her husband, the writer, 

composer and film-maker Stefan Themerson, whom she married in 1931.

Visit the Themerson Archive to appreciate the many collaborative

efforts of this wonderfully creative couple.

My First Nursery Book includes four classic tales: Who Killed Cock Robin?, 

The Gingerbread Man, Three Little Pigs and The Three Bears.

It was republished by Tate in 2009.

The cover and endpapers scans come from a guest post on Curious Pages,

in which illustrator Carson Ellis presented some of the spreads from the book. 

Matazo Kayama

Matazo Kayama (1927-2004) was born in Kyoto, the son of a designer of Kimono. 

He used to play in his father's studio, and loved to see him and his disciples

at work sketching and painting. He also learned a lot from his father's collection 

of international art books. Kayama started making art, and when he was 13 years old

he entered the Japanese Painting Academy in Kyoto. In 1944 he went on to study 

traditional Nihonga techniques at Tokyo National Academy of Fine Arts, at a time 

when the country was in the grips of World War II. His father died at the end 

of the war, but Kayama managed to keep studying art in Tokyo 

while helping his mother and younger sisters in Kyoto. 

 A Thousand Cranes, 1970, a pair of six-fold silk screens, 1.6 x 3.7m each

(click on the image to enlarge)

Kayama became a famous painter in his early 30's and held his first personal exhibition 

abroad in New York in 1961. Animals were one of his favorite themes throughout his career, 

while his sources of inspiration shifted from modern Western art to traditional RImpa Japanese 
painting and Chinese ink paintings. All of these influences were reinterpreted through Kayama's 

own refined and innovative style. His work has been exhibited at the Central Museum of Beijing 

and the British Museum, and in 2009 a large retrospective was held at Tokyo's National Art Center.

thanks to Sandi Vincent for this image

The Tree and the Cat

Another lovely and melancholy Russian animation from Niffiwan's

fantastic You Tube channel Animatsiya in English.
Directed by Yevgeny Sivokon at Kievnauchfilm in 1983.

Monday Matticchio

Sunday Safari – Prickly & Sweet

 Alessandro Sanna

Mirko Hanak, Animals We Love, 1972, thanks to art.crazed

 Ericailcane, Palloncino

Andrea Marescalchi, Arricciato

 Ferdinand Bauer, Erinaceus from Fauna Graeca, or Animals of the Levant, Vol. 1

Chen Yu Ping, Fruits in Frost, print from Heilongjiang

thanks to A Journey Round My Skull

 Miumau (?)

 Sabater Pi, 1964, thanks to a beautiful recent post on BibliOdyssey

Barry Moser

 Vladimir Zimakov, Finnish landscape

Joanne Liu, Hedgehog goes rainbow

 Yuri Vasnetsov, Ruff kids

Patricia Mullins, All in together, 1974, thanks to flamenconut