L'Animal dans la Décoration

The color of autumn leaves reminds me of this beautiful folio created by M. P. Verneuil at the height

 of the Art Nouveau's ornamental frenzy. Verneuil was one of the most talented pupils in Eugène Grasset's

 Parisian atelier, and executed many designs under his direction for the 1896 portfolio

La Plante et ses Applications Ornementales. One year later he produced his own series 

of 60 lithographic plates containing hundreds of decorative depictions of animals 

and dedicated it to Grasset, whose realistic, detailed and romantic style clearly inspired him. 

 

Thanks to the New York Public Library for the gorgeous scans.

Fantastic Ms. Fox

Lev Tokmakov from Fairy Tales about Animals, 1973 

from a wonderful post on A Journey Round My Skull

K. and I. Ershov from Kolobok, thanks to Svetlana's Library things

Russian folk tales often feature animals embodying human qualities and human behaviours. 

Fox is one of these main characters together with wolf, followed by bear, rooster, rabbit, he-goat, 

she-goat, and many others. While wolf is generally portrayed as a greedy, angry and stupid male 

(in Russian wolf is volk, a masculine noun), fox is a sly, witty, calculating female (in Russian fox 

is the feminine noun lisa). As you can imagine, fox loves playing tricks on everyone

but especially on Wolf, who gets fooled and duped everytime.

V.Vakidin, The SIster Fox and the Wolf, 1938

 Yevgeny Rachev, 1954 book cover and illustration from The Fox and the Wolf

two covers by Yuri Vasnetsov, 1950s

A. Repnikov, LISA I RAK (The Fox and the Crayfish), 1938

at Russian Art and Books

M. Zherebchevsky from The fox and the bear, 1977, via detbokk.ru

Igor Oleynikov

Two illustrations by Boris Kalaushin, discovered thanks 

to the always appreciated Kickcan & Conkers.

(you can show Deborah your love and vote for her blog here)

sorry, can't locate this one... found here

For a while I have been collecting my beloved Russian foxes as I find them, 

so I was very pleased to discover the recent post featuring 

different pictures of the same subject on Library things,

Svetlana's blog devoted to vintage Russian illustration and literature.

And she also runs HannaRivka, a wonderful little shop selling vintage children's books on Etsy!

Sunday Safari - An Army of Claws

Chicken Billy, King Crab

Last night Seba and I watched the spectacular Oceans documentary by French directors 

Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud. The otherwordly beauty of aquatic life forms is so inspirig!

One of the most awesome sequences of the movie was the encounter between 

two immense and heavily armoured crab battalions; it reminded me of the

incredible battle scenes of the Lord of the RIngs...

Animalarium's army is small but larger than life!

Bruno Munari, from Gigi cerca il suo berretto

Van Gogh, Crab on its back, thanks to This Isn't Happiness

 Lester Beall, Scope magazine cover, 1948, thanks to Alki1

 Leonard Baskin, from A Little Book of Natural History

Elizabeth Berrien, Crab

 Karolin Schnoor, Lobster Heart

 Rachel Wilson on the Behance Network

 Edward Bawden, An old crab and a young at Fry Art Gallery

Eleanor Grosch, Blue Crab

Sebastiano Ranchetti, Orange Crab

Tom Kamfuji, from AIGA Graphic Design USA No.4

Paul Rand, cover of The Condemned of Altona, 

thanks to bookworship

Blu Big Boom

Blu's latest creative opus, just posted on Vimeo, is spreading like wildfire all over the web, 
and deservedly so, since it's another huge and fantastic work of genius by Italy's greatest street artist. 
Enjoy!