Arabesque Designs

Plates (most) designed by Etienne de Lavallée-Poussin for a posthumous publication: 'Nouvelle Collection d'Arabesques, Propres à la Décoration des Appartemens' 1810. (New collection of arabesques, suitable for decorating apartments. [book]

The arabesque is a type of curvilinear decoration in painting, prints and metalwork etc, with intricate intertwining leaf, flower, animal, or geometrical designs. Rather than having Islamic origins, common usage refers to the flowing abstracted acanthus leaf scroll ornament that began to appear during the Renaissance, inspired by Greek and Roman art works.

[click through to enlarged versions; all illustrations were cropped from the
full page and have been variously spot-cleaned in the background]

Etienne de Lavallée-Poussin (1735 - 1802) was a French interior decoration designer, printmaker and artist who spent many years honing his artistic craft in Rome.

The decorative forms seen above were first produced in the 1780s, inspired by classical sources: the antiquities of Herculaneum, the grotesques of Raphael, and the designs on ancient Roman palaces and villas.

Lavallée-Poussin contributed the great majority of designs to the book, although Guyot's 1810 engravings (hand-coloured) also feature compositions by Voisin, Le Clerc, Berthelot, de Claire, and Janneret.

'Nouvelle Collection d'Arabesques, Propres à la Décoration des Appartemens' (1810) by E de Lavallée-Poussin and Marie Alexandre Lenoir [introduction] has recently been digitised and posted online by the University of Heidelberg. {click anything below 'Inhalt' and then 'Vorschau' for thumbnail pages.

It's hard to tell from the very brief mentions of this volume online, but the Heidelberg copy seems to be missing at least a few designs (by Janneret) that show the arabesques in situ as architectural motifs in apartments.

The Kingdoms of Science

Octope de cuvier, Argonaute argo, Seche commune, Calamar de brongniart, Nautile pompile, Spirule australe




Asterie vulgaire, Crinoide lys-de-mer, Ourisin comestible, Spatangue velu, Holothurie comestible, Porpite géante




Belemnite, Conilite, Ammonite, Orbiculine, Scaphite, Baculite, Hamite, Amplexe, Turrilite

Actinia viridis (Actinie verte)

Callianase souterraine, Crangon vulgaire, Squille queue-rude, Anilocre du cap, Aega entaillee, Alepidure prolonge, Pandare bicolore

Centriscus scolopax + Centriscus scutatus

Callorhynque (Callorhynchus antarticus)
+ Squale (Squalus centrina)

1 Aleyrode de l'eclaire 2 Cochenille du nopal 3 Puceron du rosier 4 Kermes du pecher 5 Pyslle du jonc




Arctia matronula (Bombice matrone) Arctia casa. (Bombice herisson) Arctia purpurea (Bombice mouchete)




Casque bezoar (Cassis glauca), Harpe ventrue (Harpa ventricosa), Buccin ecaille (Buccinium testudineum)




Civette a bandeau (Viverra fasciata), Paradoxure type (Paradoxurus typus), Ichneumie albescente (Ichneumia albescens)

Equus hemions - Le Dziggetai

Ardea Pavonina (Grue couronnee)
+ Psophia crepitans (Agami trompette)

Brugmansia bicolor

Tropaeolum tuberosum (Capucine tubereuse)

Agaric oronge, Tremelle oreille de judas, Phallus orange, Lycoperdon gigantesque coupe, Pezize bleue, Clathre frise, Lycoperdon cisele, Truffe comestible


[All these illustrations are cropped from the full page and are of varying size; they have all been fairly extensively background cleaned; click through for larger versions]


These natural history illustrations come from a mid-19th century 10-volume series from the Belgian naturalist, Pierre Auguste Joseph Drapiez (1778–1856). You might be forgiven for guessing that the outlandish semi-caricatures of fish and contrived, taxidermic qualities of the mammals were from a century earlier. And you would be right, in fact .. mostly.

Drapiez's 'Dictionnaire Classique Des Sciences Naturelles' is ostensibly an homage to the evolving scientific literature of the Enlightenment and the author was generous enough to underline the point in the title page by saying that his classical dictionary summarised the works of "Buffon, Daubenton, Lacépède, Cuvier, de Jussieu., Etc., Etc". So, while the series from Drapiez couldn't really be considered ground breaking in any material sense, it provided a useful overview of the history of a century's worth of scientific publishing.

Drapiez was something of a generalist in terms of his scientific interests and he doesn't attract a great deal of attention in the larger history of science or even in Belgian science, for that matter. He published a few works on geology and entomology, with a collaboration on a physical sciences series early in his professional career.

• The images above were selected from the first two volumes of 'Dictionnaire Classique Des Sciences Naturelles' [1853] by PAJ Drapiez, hosted by Villanova University Digital Library. {Their main Digital Library is a good timesink too, with a particularly strong Irish collection, among others}.
• All but one of the volumes of 'Dictionnaire Classique Des Sciences Naturelles' can be accessed from the Biodiversity Heritage Library. It's worth a skim: the illustrations ('text' in the sidebar index) are all - or at least all that I saw - fairly stylised, colourful and/or amusing.
• Wikipedia on Drapiez.

In Vino Veritas

Roter Velteliner

Ruther Gutedel

Grüner Silvaner

Weißer Mosler

Früher Roter Veltliner

Früher Blauer Wälscher

Blauer Kölner

Blauer Burgunder

Gelber Muskateller

"The Roman historian Tacitus described how the Germanic peoples always drank wine while holding councils, as they believed nobody could lie effectively when drunk."[source].

'Atlas der für den Weinbau Deutschlands und Oesterreichs werthvollsten Traubensorten' [1876] (Atlas of the most valuable grapes of the German and Austrian vineyards) is online at the Baden Digital State Library. (click 'Übersicht' up top for thumbnail pages).

The Magic Pudding

"The Magic Pudding is a pie, except when it’s something else, like a steak, or a jam donut, or an apple dumpling, or whatever its owner wants it to be. And it never runs out. No matter how many slices you cut, there’s always something left over. It’s magic.

But the Magic Pudding is also alive. It walks and it talks and it’s got a personality like no other. A meaner, sulkier, snider, snarlinger Pudding you’ve never met.

So Bunyip Bluegum (the koala bear) finds out when he joins Barnacle Bill (the sailor) and Sam Sawnoff (the penguin bold) as members of the Noble Society of Pudding Owners, whose “members are required to wander along the roads, indulgin’ in conversation, song and story, and eatin’ at regular intervals from the Pudding.”

Wild and woolly, funny and outrageously fun, The Magic Pudding stands somewhere between Alice in Wonderland and The Stinky Cheese Man as one of the craziest books ever written for young readers."
[That's a quote from the product description but I suspect it derives from an earlier preface]

Norman Lindsay (1879-1969) [W] wrote 'The Magic Pudding' in 1918 to settle an argument with a friend who claimed that children only liked to read about fairies. Lindsay insisted that they liked to read about food. The author of several novels, Lindsay was also a caricaturist, painter, sculptor and sketch artist, renowned in Australia and beyond.

























































This book became something of an accidental, or reluctant, local classic, considering that its author had little regard for it. Lindsay described it as his "little bundle of piffle" and believed that it held him back from becoming a serious writer.

In its original incarnation, 'The Magic Pudding' was an expensive, limited edition art book, featuring a large selection of illustrations from the more than one hundred pencil, ink and watercolour sketches that Lindsay had prepared for it. But he was opposed to the high cost of the publication:

"I wouldn’t have minded if it had come out as a kids’ book, to be sold at a price that would allow the kid to tear it up with a clear conscience".

• 'The Magic Pudding' illustrations above come from a twenty five year old copy and the B&W lithographs (out of order) were difficult to scan because of the shiny page finish.
• The original cover can be seen below, and the title page gave 'The Magic Pudding: Being The Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and his friends Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff' as the book's full name.
• 'The Magic Pudding' is in-print and available from Amazon.
• A few book characters, painted in watercolour in the 1950s by Lindsay, can be seen at the State Library of NSW site {presumably he came to like the characters in his dotage}.
• Wikipedia: Norman Lindsay & 'The Magic Pudding'.
• A feature (cartoon) film was made in 2000 but was not successful (despite the vocal presence of Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Geoffrey Rush, Sam Neil and John Cleese); excerpts can be found at Youtube.
• 'The Magic Pudding' in full at: Wikisource and Project Gutenberg.
• Previously: kids; australia; australia AND kids.

---

For anyone who doesn't know, Will Schofield (from A Journey Round My Skull fame and glory) has moved to more salubrious digs, with a much-easier-to-type site name: 50 Watts. Bookmark it / share it, but don't ignore it.

---