Borrowed Book: Art Nouveau Floral Ornament in Colour - Part 1

Art Nouveau Floral Ornament in Colour by M. P. Verneuil and edited by Charles Rahn Fry

 

This book is quite old - the library even had it rebound at some point.
Only one or two of the image plates inside have a little wear and tear, like where someone had spilled blue paint or ink, but despite that the pages are in pretty good nick. The colours are fairly muted, natural I think and were printed this way in order to refer back to the Art Nouveau styling. This is a movement in art and design history that I know very little about. But this book is clearly key to getting to know little bits about the movement. 

The plates printed often draw upon natural imagery, plant life and vines and leaves and more, the shapes are beautifully curved and interlace with each other, and the style seems reminiscent of Celtic knots and even Islamic and Arabic tessellation and geometrics (some things I might look into at a later post).

The daffodil patterns below were particularly interesting to me, as they are a very common and yet beautiful flower, their long and graceful and dressed in such a bright yellow. You know that it's spring straight away when you see them, their like a key marker of Spring - a calender if you like, and the yellow and green daffodil pattern brings to life their essence - like very active creatures, because they rise early along with other early springing bulb plants. Though they come early, they also leave early. 

 

What I thought was brilliant in this book, aside from the beautiful patterns and abundance of originality within the patterns, were that in many of the pages objects were drawn out wearing the patterns, like the lamp in the first scanned image and like the beautiful comb below.

 

At the moment my work doesn't look into the Art Nouveau movement much, though I have been picking a few patterns apart - looking into certain shapes and forms and just having a play with drawing them.
 

Reference:
Verneuil, M. P. and Fry, C. R. (ed.) (1976) Art Nouveau Floral Ornament in Colour. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
 

The scans are not in high resolution and are saved/uploaded as .jpg to save space on my google photos account. 

White, cream and pink and orange

The merger of paper, fabric and stitch.

Just some old work.

Pinning and cutting

My blog will now be showing my art work and practice as is progresses.
So now to some OLD work:

The above orange fabric is a piece of silk with a very traditional blossom pattern in black and well orange. But what an orange! The photo doesn't show the power in the orange sadly.

Lilac and White - 6 Petaled Flower

This print is very Arts and Crafts movement and William Morris like - that is why I picked it.
The print itself is very 'English' and a neat looking print that sticks to simple line work, creating negative and positive areas. The light purple adds a soothing feeling and look to the print. 

The fabric itself is a nice light to medium weight cotton. Surprisingly the white trousers of this shalwar kameez are still white.

Billboard - a collaged surface

The billboard has become a collage of papers, I just remembered these photos I took when today I saw the billboard that looked so amazing as it was below, now has another advert upon it, covering the lovely torn and worn and wet surface.
Lots of torn papers - segments and odd bits of imagery and words.

Paul Steiger, Curtain fabric

I found these curtains at a charity shop in town, bought and paid for them and used them in a piece of textiles I've been working on. Yup, I was surprised that it was made in the UK too.   

It's a beautiful heavy lace fabric with a good thick curtain lining and a nice creamy colour to it.

And underneath I was messing about with underlayering it with black and white striped fabric.  

Yay - its september! :D
I'm trying out some new layouts.
Hopefully I'll find something to stick to.

Sequinned Chunky Heels

I found these one day when looking through the sale section of T.K.Max at the Metro Center in Gateshead (UK). I was fascinated by how sequins have seemingly for me, moved form coloured to transparent, upon which behind is a print of some kind. Just imagine the possibilities of this - perhaps even tinted sequins on top of a colour or black and white print. Any way I'll be digging out some interesting sequins and beads to post up when I have a chance.

See through sequins are incredibly popular for girl and women's wear at the moment, 

both on clothes and shoes - especially t-shirts and flat ballerina style shoes.

But these caught me as something much more different,
the shoes are in fact heeled and are slipper like when putting them on.
Oh and they come in a freakishly small foot size XD - considering the size of them.

Of course sequins themselves, not just particular colours or shades of them

have always been fairly popular and on trend, and not just on foot-ware. 

The Greeks are known to have used their own coinage as sequins,
drilling holes into them and threading them onto their shoes.
Info from here
[http://damojackson.hubpages.com/hub/Sequin-Shoes]

Of course sequins now in the present are made of plastic,
are disposable, and come in hundreds of different colours and shapes,
not just the original circle shiny thing.

These brass circular button like things on running on the sides are quite an interesting detail.

I'm thinking these shoes may be puma made but unsure as these weren't tagged very well. 

But the fine small flowers on repeat were quite dinky, 

reminding me of the ballerina shoes that Primark and other shops have had in for the past year or so.
with the interesting flower motifs.

The most well known pair of sequinned shoes are the many pairs worn in
The Wizard of Oz (1939, MGM Studios) by the actress Judy Garland
who played Dorothy. These shoes have a small heel to them and
were decorated additionally with butterfly bows encrusted
with either tiny jewels or cheap glass beads of sorts.
The slippers themselves were designed by Gilbert Adrian,
at that time he was a known costume designer for MGM studios.
Info from here.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_slippers]

Found Wrapping Bears and Cute Papers

Ok so this sort of stuff is twee. I know.
But look at how the repeats at the papers edges create
brilliant vertical lines of colour that seem to waver.

I had a fiddle on Gimp with the colour as my camera
struggles with whites and greys on images such as this,
where the background is white and uploaded it here

The repetition effect is the most appealing this to this wrapping paper,
personally I love repetition, its a building block to pattern, kind of part of its DNA.

I really need to do my research as I don't know who produced or created this wrapping paper.

Vintage Clip-Ons (Accessories)

Vintage earrings and clip ons found at the Vintage fair in Newcastle:

A very delayed post but it is here.
Back at the vintage Fair in May I noticed how commonplace vintage clip ons were, clearly a type of thing that was popular at this time as in shops now there tends to just be earrings or studs that fit an ear piercing.

I know incredibly little about vintage wares, but these really interested me:

Above a great selection of all kinds of clip ons, most of which seemed shape derrived from this flower like shape with between 5-8 points, some in shapes of hexagons, heptagons and octagons - creating beautiful shiny bloomage.
A few close ups of my favourites:.

This pair form a star like shape, tapered of with points creating the octagon shape. The choice of blues is particularly interesting, one being pale and the other light - maybe they were meant to appear to be stars?

The brooch is particularly interesting with its glaze over the center that creates a boiled sweet like appearance and that beautiful border.

Below the slightly off white lines remind me of icing and the shapes themselves seem to imitate netting or lace of some kind. These would be my favourite simply with this reference to fabric.  

The abundance in usage of beads in the photos is pretty sweet, it has been rare for me to see such beautiful arrays of earrings with such a high standard of design and look using beads to construct and define.

Blue and white and often

Have you ever noticed how commonplace the blue and white pairing is?
It is on plates, with the Willow Pattern is the most recognisable representation of such mixing of colour and tone.
It works brilliantly on fabric of course.

I like how on this chiffon like fabric the print can build up,
creating layers separated by a thin veil of white, where under layers can still be seen.

And of course, lots of leaves.

Stacks, Layers and Vintage

Again more photos from May's Vintage Fair in Newcastle.
Just some interesting combinations of line
and colour that caught my eye really.

Going form one colour to the next - with an assortment of shades.

And of course  some vintage scarves,
mostly made from sheer translucent fabrics
and some of chiffon or silky smooth, thin and soft fabrics.
Each scarf represents a time or a year
when particular patterns were common and well received.

Vintage Lace Box

Photos from the Newcastle Vintage Fair
at the Royal Station Hotel next to Newcastle Central Station, May 2012,
organised by Jayne Turner and Mandy Pattullo

A nice box of lace,
what more would you want to see?
If only I had photographed that nice light pink bit of lace?

A very typical looking flower with beautiful geometry that makes its form and fills it.
Have you ever noticed the similarity lace has to mhendi/henna?

This one above reminds me of a water lilly plant,

simply with its surounding leaves decorativly curling around the plant,
creating a decorative float around it.

Wedding sweets, pink and green

Yum yum.
Especially the mix of the grapefuit like pink

and that nice cool green.
The flower shapes I think are stylised chrysanthemums flowers,
very nice pattern work.

And lets be honest,
everyone likes ribbons.

For those who don't know what houses weddings sweets can be anything,
often using interesting folding techniques or fabric.

Purple Moon and Pink Bird

Ok so it's not an Easter related post. Thankfully.

Photos of graffiti near the MA building
at Northumbria Uni's main campus in Newcastle.
Their quite pretty I think and on a nice scribble black background,
keeping with graffiti aesthetics.

And look that little pink purple blob is trying to make its way to the drains!

Bus Stops and Fashion

Who would have thought it?
They go together so well -
or at least the bus stops I've seen have managed to
co exist with their adverts nicely. 
These are ones in Town near the city library:

H&M know how to make pattern and print look amazing.

Enough said.

Detailed paisley, a very chintzy styled pattern -
and when I say chintzy I mean in terms of pattern
and not in colour -
as here the colours are almost acidic,
very warm and bright.

Next top by H&M has this beautiful embellished around neckline,
studded with fake glass gems.

The head wrap or sash or scarf (multipurpose - who knew?)
also shares the paisley motifs scattered across it.
Using pinks as well.
I got far too distracted by these bus stops. 

Book cover all Stitched

I found this book in the library recently.
Didn't have a chance to look inside so
I went and judged it by its cover instead.
I think it's brilliant!

Book reference:
Campana, F., Campana, H. (2010) Campana Brothers: Complete Works (So Far). Brazil: Rizzoli International Publications

The use of machine stitch is what really works well,
upon this forest green and the simple, but bold, dark blue lettering
its not surprising that reviews on amazon show it to be
an excellent book on the furniture design brothers.

It harnesses the machine running stitch.

One that is simple, but in it is a pattern

of one stitch then a group of thin stitches overlaid upon each other.

Sometimes simple works best when mixed with a little detail -

if it had just been a running stitch I may not have been as impressed by it

and nor would it hasve been as innovative.

Its like they have created a new stitch pattern -

or brought back an old one for a viewing.