Plants and Petals, Bloom Journal, Issue 21

Bloom Journal is a beautiful journal that is, like many journals, expensive - so I scanned in pages from issue 21 last year and finally have come around to posting them. A small preview of Bloom journal, issue 21.

A lot of rich photographs of flowers and brilliant shots of fashion, including a clever fusion of African and Japanese textiles, ideas around fabrics and patterns - something that particularly interests me.

More images from previous Bloom issues can be found here: http://www.edelkoort.com/editions/
Additionally it turns out that Trend publication also have a website called Trend Tablet (http://www.trendtablet.com/), where they post often about things that influence trends/direct trends themselves, with interesting visuals and a nice clean site.

References:
Trend Union. (2013) Bloom journal/magazine (photographs and text), no.21 2013. Various photos and texts, pp. 23,53,67 and 145.

K & M Associates. (2014) Trend Magazines, Bloom Magazine (online). Available at: http://s291360959.initial-website.co.uk/trend-magazines-catalogues/bloom-magazine/. (Accessed: 3rd June 2014).

Trend Union. (2014) About (online). Available at: http://www.edelkoort.com/trend_publication/ (Accessed: 3rd June 2014).

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. 

Victorian Design and Ornament - and I didn't have to do any research to find that out

I feel like I should have referenced this book Harvard style.
Any way here is what I got from Amazon:
Meyer's Ornament - Victorian Bible of Design by Frank Sales Meyer

In the library bookshelf above,
and got some pretty graphic golden lines below.

The 'O' in Ornament on the spine is known as illuminated text.
One of the earliest texts found with illuminated text is The Book of Hours.
A quick Google search of this will give you a wealth of words and images. 

Blogger likes to rotate images no matter which camera I use,

I'm going to get to the bottom of this though.

The image in the corner here uses typical Victorian ornamental imagery.
The vine like lines that seem to have an attitude of movement about them, 

almost like a clock face with the interruption of the 

golden blocks that seem to divide the circular motif into pieces. 

The Old

I always come across books in the library with amazing spines, makes me pick them out despite some being really big volumes of chunkyness filed with lots of text and some images. I flick through, then put them back....in the right place might I add (to all those smirfs who decide to just shove them anywhere).

Any way these I photographed a while ago. I will try to continue to photograph interesting patterned/ornamental spines.
As usual CLICK for a BIGGER image.

Vines and leaves, in lovely glossy gold

Intertwining motifs that link and curl