It's all fun and games, until...

Check out the darkly beautiful work of Ericailcane.

Lepus timidus- puntasecca 35x50 cm, black ink on 320 gm, magnani avana paper,ed.ltd to 21, 2007




Funny games- puntasecca 25x35cm, black ink on 280gsm, magnani natural white paper , ed. ltd to 22, 2007





You will find etching, screen prints, drawings, wall paintings and more on the site. Also, I like the set-up; more intuitive than many artists' online portfolios.

Tea time ...headware and beasts with five fingers

Well, synchronicity is always entertaining, I find. After posting about creatures as headware and the omnipresence of tea in popular culture, I find this week, artists can combine the creature and tea trends.

There are blogs I check, for pretty pictures, even if I do not (or cannot) read them, like the this one which used to be more bilingual (the tea-mind of Irene) but I believe is now strictly Romanian... which links to a site in Japanese, so I cannot provide much information, as my Romanian is non-existent and my Japanese, shall we generously say, is primitive. The source of this photo is Garbo (whatever that means), and this appears to be a girl dressed as a teaparty. I mean, forget the animals, THIS is a hat (delightfully paired with a necklace of dainty cookies):


If you are not one to take your tea party with you, on your head, perhaps you could train it to follow you where ever you go?




This Hybrid Tea Set are designed by Israeli ceramic artist Ronit Baranga for the “Dining in 2015″ competition of designboom.
[via News of the Craft and Style Blogosphere via Lady Lavona's Cabinet of Curiosity]

Things are better if covered in textiles...

More than a decorating scheme, this, for some is a philosophy of life.
Consider, for instance, rocks:

by Margie Oomen of Resurrection Fern and knitalatta [via make something]

The delightful tree cozy from Ward's Island, Toronto:

by Canadian textile artist Janet Morton.

Or this tree in Cleveland by Carol Hummel:


Or the work of Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos including this crab

this bull's head

and this piano

Tea time

Though never far from public consciousness since it conquered the British Empire, this commodity cum comfort beverage seems to be popping up all over the place of late. Perhaps the zeitgeist is one which suggests things would be better if we would just curl up with a cuppa.

German illustrator seasprayblue (flickr, etsy) has too many teacups.

Genius paper engineer/collage artist Roadside Projects (flickr, etsy) made this paper sculpture, "The Tea":

The Tea
Originally uploaded by Roadside Projects


I love the retro illustration feel of Rabbit sandwiches with fancy mustard by missbrigette:


This is "Magic Tea" by Toronto illustrator Sarah McNeil (aka Hello! from the nice places, blog, etsy):


This is from the previously mentioned British illustrator Adrian Johnson:


Magpie & Whiskeyjack favorite, the ever-magical Princesse Camcam designed this notebook cover for crazy and absurd ideas:


The incomparable Swedish artist Camilla Engman (who has an incredible eye for beauty, as evinced by her blog... which has the side effect of making one develop a fondness for her JRT, Morran) has tea on the brain, and perhaps the floor:




This is provocative and fabulously absurd illustrator Michael C. Hsiung's Steer in a Teacup:


South African illustrator Alex Latimer did an entire, delightful series of animals enjoying tea, like this jellyfish:


My own thoughts on tea seem to run to the magical, when I consider these two minouette illustrations:

Turtles in a Teatree (an Artist Trading Card)

and Darjeeling;


Relax, enjoy and explore some portfolios with your favorite blend. It's Friday.

Handprints

Some of you (are you there? say hello! the birds won't bite... nor will they steal your sparklies) know that I am inordinately fond of hands, and of course prints. I love this screenprint by *Pardon Hy Hindi, (who have a delightful and whimsical blog here):


I also love this image by British illustrator Adrian Johnson (check out his site):


Hands, colour, the earth and a balloon (which according to Holly at decor8 are the it item for 2009) - what's not to love?
[via grain edit]

And for something completely different, there's the mad men of etsy, Mixed Species and their screen printed hand coasters:


[via flickr]

Rhinogrades and Wunderkammer

The image shows the Nasobema lyricum, aka
"Snouter" the from the folklore section of the Haus der Natur
(House of Nature), a natural history collection in
Salzburg, Austria, uploaded by Curious Expeditions

The hole in my web-browsing-life left by the disappearance of the Proceedings of the Anathasius Kircher Society has been partially filled by the discovery [via the Storque's News of the Craft and Style Blogosphere] of The Curious Expeditions. Ironically, the upper photo has been in my flickr faves for months, but I never had the sense to check out the profile of the photographer.

The authors of the blog write, "We, your humble explorers, are devoted to unearthing and documenting the wondrous, the macabre and the obscure from around the globe...We are D and M, a gentleman and a gentle lady who were living normal lives, decided to give it all up, and ride narwhals into the sunset." Further, they have documented the rhinogradentia (as illustrated). I was introduced to the rhinogrades (or "snouters") through Harald Stümpke, Anatomie Et Biologie Des Rhinogrades — Un Nouvel Ordre De Mammifères. Masson, France (1962), which I picked up in Dijon, about five years ago. The text, for readers of French, can be found in its entirety, complete with illustrations, online.

{plate from the book scanned and uploaded
by stevelewalready}

The book is one of my favorites, and I am obsessed with books. Never before or since have I read a work of non-science-fiction (or rather non fiction science fiction, perhaps?) of such brilliance. I honestly cried at the end. Stümpke documents an entire mammalian order whose most remarkable characteristic was the nasorium, an organ derived from the ancestral species's nose, which had variously evolved to fulfill every conceivable function, notably including locomotion. Since the order evolved in isolation on the south Pacific Hi-yi-yi islands, it naturally developed its remarkable variety. All the 14 families and 189 known rhinogradentia descended from a small shrew-like animal. They gradually evolved and diversified to fill most of the ecological niches in the archipelago — from tiny worm-like beings to large herbivores and predators. Images can be found here. Sadly, the entire order, and their home are no more... as the island chain sank into the ocean as a result of an earthquake triggered by the testing of atomic bombs.

{The photo shows the Otopteryx volitans,
the from the folklore section of the Haus der Natur (House of Nature),
a natural history collection in Salzburg, Austria,
uploaded by Curious Expeditions}

{plate from the book scanned and uploaded
by stevelewalready}

I am comforted by the existence of taxidermied rhinogrades in the wunderkammer of Europe.
See also some more recent scholarship here, here and here.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's ...

Check out the illustration work, both personal and editorial, of London-based illustrator Valero Doval. I like the aerofauna digital collages, and the magpie quietly leaving this haunted house:

Art and Fashion: Wildlife as Headgear

If you did peruse the portfolio of Raquel Aparicio, you would be sure to notice this delightful, avarian headpiece, which I call the Goosehat (for obvious reasons):


But she, of course, is not the only one to portray such living headgear. In fact, the idea of furry and feathered friends on our heads has been in the collecive unconcious, forever, but a clear trend in art and illustration for the last few years.

The always fascinating Art and Ghosts (flickr, blog and shop) has a bear-head, a wolf-head, flocks of birds, nests and fruit as headgear (as well as the ever-popular anthropomorphic animal-human hybrids, wherein the subject has the head of an animal - a related but distinct trend, less importable to street fashion and millinary).

The ever magical Julie Morstad has multiple birds, boxing bunnies and even swimming fish as worn on heads.

Sirène is an illustration by one of our favorites, Princesse Camcam and shows a young girl with a school of fish as hat.

Here with have a buffalo head hat in Buffalo Dream by San Francisco illustrator Fumi Mini Nakamura.


Or consider this yak fringe by Swedish illustrator Linn Olofsdorf (with shop):


Wondering how to get in on this trend? You could always follow the lead of
Nagi Noda and use your own hair to make an avatavistique hat.




I dare you. You know you want to. The Magpie and Whiskeyjack look forward to seeing this trend filter down to streetware.

Matrioshka and other perils

A recent reminder lead me to revisit the work of Raquel Aparicio. I recommend you do too!