A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Another short but sweet Internet Archive upload, The Book of Ornamental Alphabets (1914) by Freeman Delamotte. The designs are a variety of capitals and alphabets from medieval and later manuscripts. At least one page of this I recognise from a Pepin Press collection of similar ornamental types.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Paul Franck’s calligraphy
• Gramato-graphices
• John Bickham’s Fables and other short poems
• Letters and Lettering
• Studies in Pen Art
• Flourishes
Some of the most extravagantly flourished capitals you’ll see, from another of those books with an unwieldy title, Kunstrichtige Schreibart : allerhand Versalie[n] oder AnfangsBuchstabe[n] der teütschen, lateinischen und italianischen Schrifften aus unterschiedlichen Meistern der edlen Schreibkunst zusammen getragen (1655). The authors are credited as Paul Franck, Paul Fürst and Christoph Gerhard but it’s Franck’s name I know from a book of type designs, and it was a search for better examples of these letters which led me to the Internet Archive who have scans of the entire book. This is the place where European lettering design approaches the bravura elaborations of Arabic calligraphy.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Gramato-graphices
• John Bickham’s Fables and other short poems
• Letters and Lettering
• Studies in Pen Art
• Flourishes
Panneaux decoratifs (1900) by Manuel Orazi at NYPL.
• Ghostsigns: “a collaborative national effort to photograph, research and archive the remaining examples of hand painted wall advertising in the UK and Ireland.”
• Golden Age Comic Book Stories posts some Alphonse Mucha.
• Voyage Fantastique – An illustrated guide to the body and mind at A Journey Round My Skull.
• The gallery of the International Exhibition of Calligraphy.
• Trevor Wayne Pin-Up Show, a new photo collection of the tattooed Mr Wayne which includes photos and a foreword by Clive Barker.
• Phallophonies, a gallery exploring the penis in religious art. Related: “Churchgoers are outraged over a crucifix in a Catholic church that they say shows an image of genitalia on Jesus.”
• Hollingsville: “Expect live and unscripted wanderings around voodoo science parks, examinations of cities as battle suits and thoughts on pods, capsules and world expos.”
• Phantom Circuit #33 is a Ghost Box special featuring an interview with Jim Jupp (Belbury Poly) and Julian House (The Focus Group). Related: Ghost Box films at YouTube.
• Eldritchtronica and Wyrd Bliss, a mixtape by Simon Reynolds.
• Avant garde music and cinema meet at The Sound of Eye.
• Make your own newspaper with Newspaper Club.
• Drawdio: A pencil that lets you draw music.
• Yoko Ono collects rare books.
• Song of the week: The Four Horsemen (1972) by Aphrodite’s Child.
This month is a major one in book publishing as Carl Jung’s magnum opus The Red Book, or Liber Novus, which has remained unpublished for 80 years, is issued in a facsimile edition. Selections of pages have been turning up in reviews and online previews which easily whet the appetite.
In his late 30s, Jung started writing a book called The Red Book. The Red Book is part journal, part mythological novel that takes the reader through Jung’s fantasies — hallucinations he self-induced to try and get to the core of his unconscious. … The book detailed an unabashedly psychedelic voyage through his own mind, a vaguely Homeric progression of encounters with strange people taking place in a curious, shifting dreamscape. Writing in German, he filled 205 oversize pages with elaborate calligraphy and with richly hued, staggeringly detailed paintings. (More.)
Jung maintained a lifelong fascination with alchemical symbolism and many of these pages resemble the kind of plates one finds in alchemical treatises such as the Splendor Solis, if that book had also contained additions from William Blake and Hildegard von Bingen. The only drawback is the price: at £120 this isn’t a casual purchase, but then this is over 400 pages of full-colour at a big size, 45.7 x 30.5 x 5.1 cm. Time to start petitioning rich relatives for Christmas.
• The Holy Grail of the Unconscious
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Julien Champagne, 1877–1932
• Digital alchemy
• In the Shadow of the Sun by Derek Jarman
Or Gramato-graphices. In quo varia scripturae emblemata, belgicis, germanicis, italicis, hispanicis, gallicis characteribus exaata… scripta, aeri incisa, et impressa per Cornelium Boissenium Enchusanum to give the full title. A treatise on penmanship and calligraphy from 1605 by Cornelis Dirckszoon Boissens. Also another free scan at the Internet Archive. Searching for better reproductions turned up this stunning engraving by Boissens in the Rijksmuseum collection.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
• The etching and engraving archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• John Bickham’s Fables and other short poems
• Letters and Lettering
• Studies in Pen Art
• Flourishes