Alphonse Mucha – Page 9 – { feuilleton }

The Divine Sarah

Sarah Bernhardt by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1895).

You can’t be a fin de siècle fetishist and not develop a fascination with actress Sarah Bernhardt, a woman who was muse to many of the era’s finest artists, most notably Alphonse Mucha, who she employed as her official designer. Mucha’s marvellous posters are endlessly popular, of course; less well-known is the sculpture by academic painter and Orientalist Jean-Léon Gérôme, a rare three-dimensional work inspired by the actress.

Inkwell by Sarah Bernhardt (1880).

Even less well-known is Ms Bernhardt’s own design for a curious bat-winged inkwell. I’ve read of her having created other sculptural works but so far this is the only one I’ve seen a picture of. With something as decadent as this you’d really have to use peacock quills for pens, wouldn’t you?

Bracelet by Alphonse Mucha & Georges Fouquet (1899).

And in a similar sinister vein to the inkwell there’s this serpentine bracelet and ring, a superb one-off, designed by Mucha and crafted by the jeweller Fouquet. After seeing works such as this and the Lalique dragonfly (which Ms Bernhardt once wore), most other jewellery seems timid and unadventurous in comparison.

Update: Added another photo of the inkwell.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Philippe Wolfers, 1858–1929
• Lalique’s dragonflies
• Lucien Gaillard
• Smoke
• The Masks of Medusa

Smoke

Advertising poster for Job cigarette papers by Alphonse Mucha (1898).

The law forbidding smoking in public places finally came into effect in England on Sunday, something that the nation’s smokers are still coming to terms with. I’ve never been a smoker but have always been easy-going about the activity, having had smoking parents and been around smokers for years. That said, it’ll be nice to go out now and not return home smelling like an ashtray.

To mark the passing of a nicotine-stained era, here’s a few of the many representations of smoking in the art world. Until I started looking for pictures today I hadn’t realised how many paintings there are of people (and dogs!) having smoke blown in their faces, like this one and this one.

The Opium Smoker by Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Noüy.

A Voluptuous Smoke by Charles Edouard Edmond Delort.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Perfume: the art of scent
• German opium smokers, 1900

Barney Bubbles: artist and designer

Image-heavy post! Please be patient.

Four designs for three bands, all by the same designer, the versatile and brilliant Barney Bubbles. A recent reference over at Ace Jet 170 to the sleeve for In Search of Space by Hawkwind made me realise that Barney Bubbles receives little posthumous attention outside the histories of his former employers. Since he was a major influence on my career I thought it time to give him at least part of the appraisal he deserves. His work has grown in relevance to my own even though I stopped working for Hawkwind myself in 1985, not least because I’ve made a similar transition away from derivative space art towards pure design. Barney Bubbles was equally adept at design as he was at illustration, unlike contemporaries in the album cover field such as Roger Dean (mainly an illustrator although he did create lettering designs) and Hipgnosis (who were more designers and photographers who drafted in illustrators when required).

Colin Fulcher became Barney Bubbles sometime in the late sixties, probably when he was working either part-time or full-time with the underground magazines such as Oz and later Friends/Frendz. He enjoyed pseudonyms and was still using them in the 1980s; Barney Bubbles must have been one that stuck. The Friends documentary website mentions that he may have worked in San Francisco for a while with Stanley Mouse, something I can easily believe since his early artwork has the same direct, high-impact quality as the best of the American psychedelic posters. Barney brought that sensibility to album cover design. His first work for Hawkwind, In Search of Space, is a classic of inventive packaging.

Update: BB didn’t work with Mouse in SF, I’ve now been told.

Hawkwind: In Search of Space (1971).

It’s fair to say that Hawkwind were very lucky to find Barney Bubbles, he immediately gave their music—which was often rambling and semi-improvised at the time—a compelling visual dimension that exaggerated their science fiction image while still presenting different aspects of the band’s persona. In Search of Space is an emblematic design that opens out to reveal a poster layout inside. One of the things that distinguishes Barney Bubbles’ designs from other illustrators of this period is a frequent use of hard graphical elements, something that’s here right at the outset of his work for Hawkwind.

This album also included a Bubbles-designed “Hawklog”, a booklet purporting to be the logbook of the crew of the Hawkwind spacecraft. I scanned my copy some time ago and converted it to a PDF; you can download it here.

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