artnlight

There is nothing quite like weathered paper. The real thing. Aged to perfection, they have a smell and patina which cannot be gotten through any shortcut. These pieces are works of art, antique, priceless and bring visuals of a hundred years and countless hours of someone burning the midnight oil in silent study.

Da Vinci's 1st appearance on this blog :) The legendary vitruvian man.

A page from Da Vinci's much saught after studies of the human anatomy

A printers mark

"During the Renaissance keeping diaries and notebooks became a widespread practice, not only amongst artists and scientists but also amongst the wealthy upper classes and the aristocracy, as did the sending back and forth of notes and letters. As a consequence the art of calligraphy as well as of page layout and lettering aquired special importance. Calligraphy masters travelled from mansions to palaces teaching the new educated elite these new fine crafts."

"King Louis XIV, in 1692, directed that a typeface be designed at any necessary expense for the exclusive use of the Royal printer. The design was carried out by Grandjean together with a group of mathematicians, philosophers, and others."

"Calligraphy masters travelled from mansions to palaces teaching the new educated elite these new fine crafts. However, it is the scholarly notebooks and texts, often embellished with illustrations, that are the most noteworthy of the genré. "

Just look at the balance & agelessness of this gorgeous layout.

This is the stuff that makes history. Labour of love, painstakingly detailed and created to last. While we are on the subject of books, there is this treasure house I need to share with you. Dedicated to all lovers of books, history, art and beauty, here are some pieces of art I'd give an arm and leg to just set my eyes on.

Renaissance book bindings
"The Art of the Book

"The colophons of the their creations are testimony to their short lives since most of the books that they worked upon were only completed in several of their brief lifetimes, one scribe replacing the other over decades. We call these beautiful books Illuminated Manuscripts.
Read more here.
Those interested can get a mine of information on the details of the these gorgeous books in The History of Visual Communication. Th pages inside are beautifully designed and laid out.

Illuminated Manuscripts: " An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration or illustration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniatures. In the strictest definition of the term, an illuminated manuscript only refers to manuscripts decorated with gold or silver. However, in both common usage and modern scholarship, the term is now used to refer to any decorated manuscript."

After designing something like this one can go die peacefully :)

Ok. What has never happened on this blog is about to. What's the harm in creating some needless suspense :) The announcement: I am going to post DAILY. (Vineeta, take a deep breath, for courage.) This is a month-long project I have undertaken so I can prove to myself that I can be disciplined. So this month of March, each day on 'artnlight' there will be something new. Each month till date I promised myself 'next month' I will post more often. New year came and went, nothing changed, feb came & went, nothing changed. I kept thinking work load will reduce, I will post, I will go on vacation & be free & then post. Nothing happened. So this is it. I'm not waiting anymore. There is enough work in my life in terms of office work load & personal committments, but I have decided. I need to know I can do this. Wish me luck guys .

"Long before I discovered in the Alhambra an affinity with the Moors in the regular division of the plane, I had recognized this interest in myself. At first I had no idea at all of the possibility of building up my figures. I did not know any "ground rules" and tried, almost without knowing what I was doing, to fit together congruent shapes that I attempted to give the form of animals.... The dynamic equilibrium between the motifs... has led to the creation of numerous prints. It is here that the representation of opposites of all kinds arises. For is not one led naturally to a subject such as Day and Night by the double function of the black and the white motifs? It is night when the white, as an object, shows up against the black as a background, and the day when the black figures show up against the white."

Here, too, we have the components diminishing in size as they move outwards. The six largest (three white angels and three black devils) are arranged about the centre and radiate from it. The disc is divided into six sections in which, turn and turn about, the angels on a black background and then the devils on a white one, gain the upper hand. In this way, heaven and hell change places six times. In the intermediate, "earthly" stages, tbey are equivalent.

On the uniformly gray surface of a strip of paper that is being unrolled, a simultaneous development in form and contrast is taking place. Triangles, at first scarcely visible, change into more complicated figures, whilst the colour contrast between them increases. In the middle they are transformed into white and black birds, and from there fly off into the world as independent creatures. And so the strip of paper on which they were drawn disappears.

lizards

Faces.
I found this very fascinating. Look carefully. I love the many different faces coming together.
And do check out World of Escher where we get kinds of Escher cool maal(stuff).
Silk ties

Tshirts & stationery.

History, is priceless. It gives us people whom we have no way of knowing, its shows us their lives as examples, as inspiration. And if you need comfort from people who have been there done it, it gives you that in all glorious detail. One of histories many gifts is William Morris, who is very close to my heart as he was an artist with many definitions and therefore bound by none. His art went where his passions went and he was an architect, furniture & textile designer, poet and socialist. I have often wondered, envied and looked wistfully at people who found that one passion and all their life went into honing that into perfection. But William Morris is someone who lived a life where there was space and scope to go and develop all the different things he wanted to do. He just did what he wanted :)

"For several years after his marriage Morris was absorbed in two intimately connected occupations: 1, the building and decoration of a house for himself and Jane, and 2, the foundation of a firm of decorators who were also artists, with the view of reinstating decoration, down to its smallest details, as one of the fine arts.

Morris was producing repeating patterns for wallpaper as early as 1862, and some six years later he designed his first pattern specifically for fabric printing. As in so many other areas that interested him, Morris chose to work with the ancient technique of hand woodblock printing in preference to the roller printing which had almost completely replaced it for commercial uses. By 1883, Morris wrote "Almost all the designs we use for surface decoration, wallpapers, textiles, and the like, I design myself. I have had to learn the theory and to some extent the practice of weaving, dyeing and textile printing: all of which I must admit has given me and still gives me a great deal of enjoyment."

The Rubaiyat of Omar Kayam, text and decoration by Morris with illustrations by Burne-Jones, 1870s