Country Folks

Vyaceslav Legkobit

This time of year always finds me in the mood for some 

good old fashioned folk-inspired art from Russia and Eastern Europe.

I would be very happy to live in the same village as all these lively creatures!

Russian figurine, thanks to Made with Love by Hannah (check out her blog 

fully of lovely hand-crafted, folk-inspired clothing, art and tutorials)

Yuri Vasnetsov, Russian folk song, via HannaRivka

Russian Folk Tales, author unknown, thanks to normanack 

Vladimir Golozubov, Two Roosters, thanks to Kievljanka

Yevgeny Charushin

Josef Lada, thanks to 50 Watts 

Solomea Loboda, linocut from Ukrainian folk Rhymes, thanks to polny shkaf

another lovely book from HannaRivka

 L'udovita Fullu, Varila Mysicka Kasicku, 1966 ( a lucky vintage bookstore find)

Rumen Skorchev, Bulgarian Folk Tales, 1979, 

and N. Trepenok, Sharp-toothed Mouse and Rich Sparrow, 

thanks to Book Graphics

Feodor Rojankovsky, The three bears, 1967 

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. 

Pakistani Drive

Today we take a ride aboard  the most beautiful, eye-popping road monsters in the world,

an explosive, psychedelic, pop, opulent and unique expression of Pakistani folk art...

Complete with birds, fish and other animal decorations galore!

"The cover for Granta 112 was created by Islam Gull, a truck and bus artist of Bhutta village 

in Karachi, as part of a greater collaboration with Pakistani artists for the issue. 

Gull, born in Peshawar, has been painting since the age of thirteen. Twenty-two years ago 

he settled in Karachi, where he now teaches his craft to two young apprentices."

 Photo via Englishcafe.

While the art of vehicle decoration is practiced in various Asian regions, in Pakistan 

this custom has reached a greater popularity and a higher level. All across the country 

the vast majority of vehicles, from trucks and buses to fruit carts and rickshaws, 

has been transformed into a dazzling display of colorful creativity.

The eclectic decorations mix flowers and other ornamental motifs with sacred 

and secular imagery including calligraphic verses, portraits, and landscape scenes. 

 Two gorgeous details photographed by rtw2007. 

Most of the photos in this post come from the website of Peter Grant,

a photographer from New Zealand who is selling them as prints

and is also trying to publish a book with these materials.

Wouldn't it be great to admire the intricate details in print resolution?

"For a truck driver, the truck is his princess in Pakistan. I don't know what's the gender of trucks outside 

your country :) but here truck is a SHE. To decorate his princess is not only the most important thing 

for a truck driver, but it helps him run his business. Painting, lights, and wood work (specially on doors 

and inside the truck cabin) are the specialty of various artists, and truck drivers buy this work 

on very expensive rates."  quoted from Perfect Stranger on Flickr.

"In a country where the per capita income is barely $2,000, it is surprising to see truck owners spend 

thousand of dollars per truck for structural modifications that convert these gas-guzzling, smoke-spewing, 

road-dominating monstrosities into beautiful moving canvases covered in poetry, folk tales, and 

‘religious, sentimental and emotional world-views of the individuals employed in the truck industry,’ 

making it one of the biggest forms of representational art in the country."

The above quote was originally posted by Ishtiaq Ahmed on Flickr.

Go visit his photostream to see two more amazing truck shots.

In case you haven't overdosed yet, there's loads more photos on Flickr...

And here you can read an interesting article about the art and its history.

Polish Papers

One of the folk crafts that I love the most is decorative papercutting,

an art form which has evolved into various unique styles in different areas of the world. 

From Chinese Jan Zhi to Swiss and German Scherenschnitte, to Mexican Papel Picado,

I enjoy them all, and hope in time to feature each style on Animalarium.

Image from the beautiful Polish blog Cebrita.

Polish Wycinanki is one of the most colorful and charming papercutting traditions.

They became popular around the mid-1800's, and were used by peasants 

to decorate the whitewashed walls, furniture and wooden ceiling beams of their cottages, 

or to give as gifts. The intricate decorations are formed by multiple layers of colored paper 

which are folded, cut, torn, and sometimes embossed to create stylized patterns. 

The subjects represented are peacocks, roosters and other birds, 

as well as flowers and annual festivities. 

Styles vary by region; the most basic is the single color tradition from the Kurpie district.

The multicolor Lowicz Wycinanki developed in the more prosperous region west of Warsaw. 

These elegant, elaborately cut and arranged paper overlays were displayed tandem style 

over the windows, doorways, and walls of rural homes.  

image from Lowicz Wycinanki gallery at www.perfekt.krakow.pl

Design from Kickcan and Conkers.

One of the few books about Wycinanki available on amazon. 

A contemporary Wycinanki inspired decoration by Grzegorz Wacławek

from Lou et Tom, a lovely blog about the adventures of a French family in Poland.

 Wycinanki Bird Cards at Pressbound.

A Gathering of Birds by Wycinanki artist Susan L. Throckmorton 

 Typographic Wycinanki illustration at Cebrita.