Fuck Yeah, Book Arts!

ruineshumaines:

Incident of Nature by Owen Glidersleeve | Follow him on Tumblr.

An illustration for the Royal Mail’s 2011 Year Book, to introduce a chapter on the William Morris stamp collection. This quote is taken from one of Morris’ 1892 lectures ‘Town and Country’, and the design is based on an amalgamation of Morris’ patterns.

William Morris (1834–1896) was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and utopian socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement. Morris wrote and published poetry, fiction, and translations of ancient and medieval texts throughout his career. He devoted much of the latter half of his life to the Kelmscott Press, which he founded in 1891. Kelmscott was devoted to the publishing of limited-edition, illuminated-style print books. The 1896 Kelmscott edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer is considered a masterpiece of book design.

(Source: nordolan)

Anonymous asked: I've always admired your icon but I don't recognise it, is it some sort of old or famous gold book or treasure?

The icon is in actual fact a gold frame enclosing a lock of hair by William Morris (one of my all-time favourite artists and book-designers). I first stumbled across the work whilst reading a book on the Arts and Crafts Movement some years ago, and without finding much information behind the image, mistook it for an old golden book. Although I later found out it wasn’t actually a book (right before I created this blog), I decided it still very much looked like the front cover of a precious book I would like to read and treasure. I just love the mystery behind that blond lock of hair, and couldn’t help imagining up a romantic story behind it :)