A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Art Nouveau
The Peacock (no date).
Dancer Ruth St Denis (1879–1968) strikes Art Nouveau poses in the New York Public Library’s Denishawn Collection, now at Flickr.
Radha (1904).
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Peacocks
• Rene Beauclair
• Elizabetes Iela 10b, Riga
• The Maison Lavirotte
• Whistler’s Peacock Room
• Beardsley’s Salomé
• The art of Hernan Gimenez
• Images of Nijinsky
Le Sphinx Mystérieux (1897).
Charles van der Stappen’s most impressive sculptural work and one I missed including in this earlier post. Van der Stappen doesn’t seem to have done anything else like this which is a shame as it’s a very striking fin de siècle image, conveying a sense of enigma without resorting to the usual human/animal hybrids; Sarah Bernhardt would have loved the costume. This picture was swiped from Beautiful Century and Mariana took it from the book with the best reproduction I’ve seen to date, Gabriele Fahr-Becker’s Art Nouveau.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• La belle sans nom
• The Feminine Sphinx
• Le Monstre
• Carlos Schwabe’s Fleurs du Mal
• Empusa
The Modern Poster by Will Bradley (1895).
A selection from the NYPL Digital Gallery. There’s more by the great Will Bradley (1868–1962) here.
Abstract design based on peacock feathers by Maurice Verneuil (1900?).
Pavo; Lophophorus (1834–1837).
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Rene Beauclair
• Elizabetes Iela 10b, Riga
• The Maison Lavirotte
• Whistler’s Peacock Room
• Beardsley’s Salomé
La belle sans nom (1900).
An illustration by French artist Manuel Orazi (1860–1934) from Figaro illustré for a story by Jean Rameau. Via NYPL Digital Gallery. It’s good to see something else by Orazi other than advertising illustration. His astonishing work for Austin De Croze’s 1895 Calendrier Magique (below) can be seen in full at the Cornell collection. Great graphics for Halloween.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Feminine Sphinx
• Le Monstre
• Carlos Schwabe’s Fleurs du Mal
• Empusa
This delightful piece of Art Nouveau-inflected grooviness is one of the new T-shirts designed by Nigel Waymouth for The Look via Topman. Waymouth, as some readers here may know, was part of Hapshash & the Coloured Coat in the late Sixties, London’s leading group of psychedelic poster artists. In addition to design, Waymouth and Sheila Cohen opened the legendary Kings Road boutique Granny Takes A Trip (named after its stock of antique clothes) in 1966. That shop’s fame inspired a one-off single by Stockport group The Purple Gang in 1967 which the BBC banned for alleged drug references, although the trip in question concerns an elderly woman journeying each year to Hollywood. Waymouth’s flyer for the single, of which the shirt design is a variant, can be seen below.
The Look Presents Nigel Waymouth – in-store and online at Topman from Friday August 8
“Sepia tints and flouro tones…darkly psychedelic graphics for the 21st Century…”
Nigel Waymouth is a legend of British rock fashion and design.
Not only did he found the wild 60s Kings Road boutique Granny Takes A Trip (whose ever-changing shop design attracted the likes fo the Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Anita Pallenberg, Brigitte Bardot and Marianne Faithfull), but his graphic design company Hapshash produced eye-popping designs, posters and record sleeves for the The Who and Jimi Hendrix.
Original Hapshash artwork is highly prized in collector circles and Granny’s clothes are seriously sought-after on the vintage market. Now Nigel Waymouth makes his re-entry into fashion via The Look Presents – http://thelookpresents.com – with a contemporary t-shirt range reflecting the original Granny’s aesthetic by delving into decadent psychedelia replete with sepia tints and flouro tones.
The first five t-shirts are available in-store and online at Topman from August 8, with the launch party on August 14 at the George and Dragon in Shoreditch.
The Look Presents Nigel Waymouth is the second collection from the creative hub formed by author Paul Gorman and Soho boutique owner Max Karie. Our first, a collaboration with rock & roll brand Wonder Workshop, proved a great success earlier this summer and this autumn we launch The Look Presents Priceless, a menswear capsule collection with couturier to rock royalty Antony Price.
The shirts are priced £20 each. I rarely wear T-shirts on their own but I’ll probably have to get one of these, for the associations if nothing else.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The New Love Poetry
• Dutch psychedelia
• Family Dog postcards
• The 14-Hour Technicolor Dream revisited