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.