Cards as Block Prints

         Playing cards have a history as long as paper, but they have a particularly synergistic relationship with block printing, which is what makes them my focus here.  Cards and card games were most likely invented in China in the 9th century, directly pushed by woodblock printing technology.  As long as game pieces were made of stones, bones, or even ivory tiles there was a limit to how much information could be included on each piece, or how standardized they could be.  It was the invention of paper in China that allowed elaborate pictures, numbers, words, and so on to be included on each card.  Of course, the more information and the more elaborate the images, the more work it was to create each card by hand, which is why it was then the invention of printing that really allowed cards and card games to take off.  Cards may have been one of the earliest things to be printed.  In Europe, too, it was the establishment of paper mills in Europe in the fourteenth century, followed by wood block printing in the early fifteenth century, that helped spread cards more widely there.

        I’m not here to give you a history of playing cards, which is very complicated.  I’m mostly ignoring the development of suits and their many variations in different countries over time, face cards and their variations, different packs with different designs for different games, and on and on.  For now all I’m looking at is the printmaking.  The problem with playing cards as opposed to “art,” however, is that they are often undated, and they’re used hard and treated as somewhat disposable.  I have a few printed cards from China for you ranging from about 1400 to the late-19th century.

        Playing cards appeared in Europe by the late 1300s, but their route there is a little murky.  We can guess that they travelled to Europe with traders, crusaders, and invaders, very likely by way of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt.  By the 1400s there were sermons condemning gambling at cards.  Here are some early cards, from the 15th and 16th centuries, and you can see already that we’ve got a range of artistic quality, and also a range of personalities depicted, including an archer who’s clearly influenced by Islamic fashion, as well as Judith, Juno, Helen, Paris, and Lancelot.

        Playing cards arrived in Europe from the south, but it’s in Germany that the synergy between printing and playing cards took off.  The German printers had developed their techniques by printing religious pictures and indulgences, which led to their ability to make superior playing cards, which was a huge part of the printing boom, which led to ever wider popularity of cards, and so on, in a cycle that I’d call virtuous if it weren’t for the sermons.  At this stage most cards were hand colored after printing, sometimes using stencils.  For my next selection of pictures I’ve got a variety of face cards, including King of Hearts and Queen of Clubs (aka Hecuba), but also another Queen whose suit I don’t know because this is the black ink only and her red color will need to be added later.  Then there’s also the King and Ober of Acorns, and what I think is the Fool from the section of a deck that melds with what we know as the tarot… but more on that later.  While the king and the un-suited queen have iconography that’s similar to modern decks of cards, the others are quite different.

        Speaking of the unfamiliar suits (unfamiliar to English card players), many of the earlier decks had fun little pictures on all the cards, not just the “face cards,” and those pictures were by no means standardized.  I give you here three different versions of the 2 of Bells, two versions of the 7 of Leaves, and an Ace of Swords.  The fact that the Ace is a dragon apparently tells you that this one was made for the Portuguese market.  Each of these is a fun miniature block print in its own right, and while some are cruder than others, they all have a certain charm.  Nowadays most number (pip) cards are pretty boring, except when artists decide to make a statement.  To see the art deck created by one of my own classes of seventh graders, check out this prior post: Playing with a Full Deck.

        It was also the block printing process that gave us the innovation of dividing the suits into two red and two black, which simplified the printing and coloring, especially for the pip cards.  The French came up with that, which moved them to the forefront of playing card production.  They also contributed to standardization of design by requiring each region to have a certain amount of standardization for taxation purposes.  Taxation is also why card decks printed in England had elaborate Ace of Spades cards: that was the card that proved the tax had been paid to the Crown.

        In 1835 an American manufacturer invented a machine that could print all 4 colors at once, and by around 1860 double-ended card designs appeared.  Another innovation was designs with the card identification at the edges or corners so that they could be held in a tight fan.  Nowadays a standard deck of cards is completely standardized, although there are lots of novelty decks with every imaginable theme from birds of the world to Game of Thrones.  But with the invention of other methods of reproduction (engraving, lithography, photography…), the symbiotic relationship between playing cards and relief printmaking was severed.  Despite that, my own exploration of cards is not yet complete, because playing cards not only have a long history intertwined with block printing, they also have a long history intertwined with fantasy.  Tune in next time to learn about that.

[Pictures: Chinese playing card, woodcut, ca. 1400 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Khanhoo variety playing cards, wood block print, China, 1644-1896 (Image from The British Museum);

Kuanpai game cards, woodblock print and color, China, late 19th c. (Image from Brooklyn Museum);

French playing cards, woodcut with color, ca. 1495 (Image from Yale Beinecke Library);

Early French court cards, woodcut, ca. 1495 (Image from Yale Beinecke Library);

Early Rouen court cards, hand colored woodcut, ca. 1500 (Image from Yale Beinecke Library);

Deutsche Spielkarte, hand colored woodcut, Germany, 16th century (Image from Universitätsbibliothek Salzburg);

King of Hearts, woodblock print with color, 1793-4 (Image from Bibliothèque nationale de France);

Queen of Clubs, woodblock print with color, 1672-98 (Image from Bibliothèque nationale de France);

Queen, woodcut, Britain, late 17th c. (Image from The British Museum);

Fool, woodblock print with color, Germany, 1775-99 (Image from Bibliothèque nationale de France);

Ober and King of Acorns, hand-coloured woodcut, Germany, late 18th c. (Image from The British Museum);

Two of Bells, engraving and stencilling, Germany, ca. 1810 (Image from Yale Beinecke Library);

Two of Bells and Seven of Leaves, woodcut, Germany, 1800-25 (Image from The British Museum);

Two of Bells, wood block and stencil, Germany, 1780-1800 (Image from Bibliothèque nationale de France);

Seven of Leaves, hand-coloured woodcut, Germany, 19th century (Image from The British Museum);

Ace of Swords, woodcut, made in Germany for the Portuguese market, before 1896 (Image from The British Museum);

Knave of possibly Spades, woodcut, France, before 1896 (Image from The British Museum);

Queen of Spades, woodcut and stencil, France, 1890 (Image from Bibliothèque nationale de France);

King of Diamonds in advertisement, wood engraving, Britain, 1886 (Image from The British Museum).]

Recollection and Dawn

         Today I want to share some amazing surreal wood engravings by Kayoko Moriyama (Japan, b. 1966).  Unfortunately there are two factors that are preventing me from really finding out as much as I’d like about these pieces.  Firstly, I don’t have very big images of most of these, and I’d really love to blow them up and look at every tiny detail more closely.  Still, I can at least see that there are all sorts of interesting things going on!  And secondly, a lot of the information about these pieces is in Japanese which I cannot read, so I’m working with some Google translate (which may or may not be accurate), and piecing together information from various sites.

        In any case, I first came across this piece “Dawn” on The Society of Wood Engravers web site.  Wood engravings are often irregular shapes because they are done on end grain, which is frequently simply rounds of trees.  This piece, at 22x17 cm, is quite large for a wood engraving, and there is a lot of detail crammed into that space.  What’s going on?  A whale carries a magical castle on its back, sprouting turrets and trees exuberantly.  The whole thing seems to be in the sky, with clouds in the background, and yet a swoosh as of

underwater bubbles wreaths it.  A girl runs after a dog up the stairs to the castle doorway.  Like most wood engravings, it’s all fine textures, from the stippling that gives the whale its shading to the different patterns on the castle walls and roofs.

        Another girl is running up another stairway in “Recollection,” a much smaller print, about 9x9 cm.  This time we don’t know where the stairway leads since it disappears behind the ram’s head.  It’s also hard to tell whether the girl is scared or excited, running from something or running to something, but at least the goat has a benevolent expression.  What does this have to do with “Recollection?”  I don’t know, but that’s surrealism for you.

        Another goat appears in “Mr. Jacob and the Airship.”  There are actually three airships in the sky behind this magnificently horned ram, unless perhaps they’re different views of the same one.  I would certainly like to know the story behind this one, although in some ways part of the fun is not knowing.  What sort of story would you make up to explain this as an illustration?

        I have to restrain myself from sharing lots more of these, so I’ll finish with just one more: “Departure.”  This shows a dog being lifted off a moon-like surface, but instead of the bunch of balloons one might expect, the dog is being lifted by an enormous, dense bunch of flowers.  There’s a lot I like about this, from the concept of the bouyancy of flowers to the incredible details of all those petals.  This is another huge one by wood engraving standards: 32x29

cm.  I hope the dog is going somewhere that feels like home - perhaps to find the little girl and join her in the castle on the whale’s back.

[Pictures: Dawn, wood engraving by Kayoko Moriyama (Image from The Society of Wood Engravers);

Recollection, wood engraving by Moriyama;

Mr. Jacob and the Airship, wood engraving by Moriyama, (Images from KayokoMoriyama.com);

Departure, wood engraving by Moriyama, 2025 (Image from College Women’s Association of Japan).]

Finding Moses

         Today I have for you a chiaroscuro woodcut by John Baptist Jackson (UK 1701-1780) a British artist who worked in Venice for a while, where he was obviously very interested in the artists of the Venetian school.  In 1745, his last year in Venice, he produced a series of 19 major wood block prints reproducing paintings on Biblical subjects by Venetian masters.  This one is entitled “The Finding of Moses” by Paolo Veronese (1528-1588), and while normally I’m less interested in block printing as a mere method of reproduction, there are some interesting things about this one.

        First of all, chiaroscuro is all about the drama of light and shadow.  You can brush up on the basics of chiaroscuro block prints here.  At their most basic, chiaroscuro prints include just two colors, medium and dark, in addition to the white paper.  Jackson, however, made some innovations to the technique.  Apparently he developed new inks to facilitate a wider range of colors, and in this piece I think I see four colors of ink, plus the paper.  It makes the whole thing look a bit like a sepia-toned photograph, but obviously this can’t have been Jackson’s goal, since this was still quite a long time before the invention of photography.

        The other thing that’s interesting is that I can’t find the exact painting on which this piece was based.  Veronese seems to have painted the subject of Pharaoh’s daughter finding Moses multiple times, but although I can find 7 different examples on-line, not one of them matches this print.  This raises the question of how closely Jackson followed his model, or whether he chose to make changes in the composition to suit the new medium and color scheme.  So although Moses is being found in this print, I haven’t found the Moses it was based on!  (Here is Wikipedia’s link to 7 versions, in case you’re curious.)

        Things I particularly like about this piece include the pyramids in the background, how the background is only light colors, the beautiful trees, and how the Pharaoh’s daughter is anachronistically dressed like a Venetian princess of about 1580.  (It always tickles me when artists paint historical subjects in contemporary dress.)  And of course the carving is very impressive, as is the chiaroscuro shading.  This is not a style or technique I’m ever likely to do myself, but it’s always cool to see how a master artist tackles it.

[Picture: The Finding of Moses, wood block print by John Baptist Jackson based on a painting by Veronese, 1745 (Image from Princeton University Library).]

Where Connections Lead

         This post is to help spread the word about another Kickstarter campaign with which I’m connected.  Where Connections Lead is “a global speculative fiction anthology that celebrates diverse voices and imaginative storytelling,” and I’m very pleased that one of my stories is included.  To find out all about it, please do go check out the campaign on Kickstarter to find out more about the project and the authors whose work is included.  The editors made it an explicit goal to include a wide diversity of voices from around the globe and from different backgrounds, which makes this project especially interesting and important.

        My short story, “The Horn,” is unusually open-ended.  It was one of those stories that I absolutely loved imagining and writing, but then wasn’t really sure whether it would ever find a home.  But when I heard about the call for Where Connections Lead, it seemed like a perfect fit for these characters because the story is all about how art teacher Ms Lydia Bell and the Horn connect… and the open-ended hope that their connection might lead to a relationship that could widen the world for both.  Not only was the story accepted, but the cover artist Roxane Llanque also did an illustration for the story.  Since I am someone who generally does her own illustrations, and who is far from being famous enough to get much fan art, it’s especially exciting for me to see how someone else responds to my writing and pictures what I’ve imagined.  It’s fun to see how this isn’t exactly the way I pictured the Horn, but how it brings him to life in a new way.  And it's super fun that an art print of this illustration is one of the add-ons in the Kickstarter campaign.

        As for my involvement in the project, that is in itself an illustration of Where Connections Lead.  I met co-editor Sylvia Woodham several years ago through Yale Women Writers Group, an on-line group that builds connections between women writers of all sorts, all of whom have a connection with Yale University.  (In my case, Yale College.)  I then invited Sylvia to participate in Strong Women-Strange Worlds, a series of on-line readings that builds connections between authors and readers.  Sylvia read with Strong Women-Strange Worlds in November 2022, and you can watch a recording of that event on YouTube if you’re curious.  And it was through that connection that I was invited to submit to this anthology project, just proving that you can never tell where connections will lead.

I’m hoping that my connection with you will lead you to check out the Kickstarter campaign going on now, and see whether this sounds like something you’d like to support, thus building connections to more authors and readers around the world.

[Pictures: Where Connections Lead, cover artwork by Roxane Llanque;

The Horn, illustration by Llanque.]

Three Bridges by Greenwood

         John Frederick Greenwood (UK, 1885-1954) followed a pretty standard artist trajectory for his time.  He studied at art school, had some pieces shown in prestigious shows, illustrated some books, taught, and had membership in various wood-engraving societies.  (Some sources spell his middle name Frederic.)  I toss off this somewhat flippant biography not to be dismissive, however, but because the biography doesn’t seem to me to be the interesting thing about his work.  I like his work for its own sake.

        Because these are wood engravings, they have that characteristic wood engraving look of very fine white lines, with lots of cross-hatching and other fine patterns.  Each of these three pieces has a different balance of black and white, but they all feature bridges of the British countryside.  The first one is my favorite, I think, although it might be a tie with number 2.  At any rate, I really like the textures of the bridge.

        I find the water in the first two pieces especially interesting, because I would never think to depict a river flowing across the paper with those fine straight vertical lines.  It certainly works, though.  The third piece shows water more the way I would expect it and be inclined to do it myself.  (Having just made my own block print of a bridge over a river, I recently had to give the matter a lot of thought.  I wish I’d looked at Greenwood’s pieces when I was working on mine, to give me more ideas about different possibilities.)  In this second piece I especially like the buildings to the left of the bridge, while the rocks at the bottom would have been very helpful for me in my own carving.

        The third piece is more geometric, with straighter straight lines, more angular angles, and more geometric crosshatching - all except that wavier water.  Because I don’t have exact dates on all of these pieces, I don’t know whether the difference in style between them represents a shift over time, or whether Greenwood simply experimented with slightly different looks in different pieces.

        There’s something very satisfying and attractive about bridges, and these are a wonderful selection of wood-engravings depicting them.

[Pictures: Grassington Bridge, Morkshire, wood engraving by John Frederick Greenwood, ca. 1924 (Image from The Annex Galleries);

Durham Castle and Framwellgate Bridge, wood engraving by Greenwood (Image from The Annex Galleries);

The Wharfedale Bridge, wood engraving by Greenwood from The New Woodcut by Malcolm C. Salaman, 1930.]

Milne's Alchemist

         Time for another fantasy poem (not by me), so here’s a charming one by A.A. Milne.

        The Alchemist

There lives an old man at the top of the street

And the end of his beard reaches down to his feet,

And he’s just the one person I’m longing to meet,

        I think that he sounds so exciting;

For he talks all the day to his tortoiseshell cat,

And he asks about this, and explains about that,

And at night he puts on a big wide-awake¹ hat

        And sits in the writing-room, writing.

He has worked all his life (and he’s terribly old)

At a wonderful spell which says, “Lo, and behold!

Your nursery fender is gold!”—and it’s gold!

        (Or the tongs, or the rod for the curtain);

But some how he hasn’t got hold of it quite,

Or the liquid you pour on it first isn’t right,

So that’s why he works at it night after night

        Till he knows he can do it for certain.

¹ So as not to go to sleep.

        This poem is from When We Were Very Young, 1924.  Since this book is for young children, the poems are all quite gentle and whimsical.  I’ve shared more fantasy poetry of a different sort by Milne here: Bo, Boll, Bill, Bole.  (Still whimsical, but much more satirical.)  And if you want to learn more about the Alchemist’s work and why it’s so difficult and taking him such a long time, you can read about The Philosopher’s Stone.

[Picture: The Alchemist, illustration by Ernest H. Shepard from When We were Very Young by A.A. Milne, 1924.]

Flights of Foundry Signpost

         This weekend I’ll be participating in Flights of Foundry, an all-virtual, global, interdisciplinary convention for the speculative arts.  Since this will be my first time at Flights of Foundry, I can’t tell you much about what it will be like, but nevertheless I’ve made my usual pre-con signpost to point out more resources for anyone interested in the programming I’m on.

• Reading - Once again I’ve got my reading scheduled early in the con before I have a chance to advertise it at my other appearances!  Still, this could be interesting because I’ve got a 50 minute slot, which will give me time to answer lots of questions, take requests, and share a lot more than is usually possible.  (As long as anyone comes, of course!)

        All I’ll share here is the listing of all my published writing.

• Art Showcase - I’m not entirely sure what to expect from this one, but the resources I want to highlight are

        All my currently available work listed on my web page

        My handout of materials, tools, and instructions for making relief block prints

        Process - all the blog posts talking about my own process for particular pieces

        Step-by-Step - all the blog posts giving instructions on particular techniques

• What Makes Good Character Design - As I look through past posts on my process for particular pieces (to see them all, see the link above), I find that I haven’t much discussed the character design of humans!  But here are a few posts that may be relevant.

        Jubjub Bird

        Grand Marhoot

        Portrait of the Artist with Muses

        Billy Goats Gruff (and Troll)

• Finding Hope Through Creativity - Here are just a few posts, mostly about the importance of stories with hope, and the use of spec fic to imagine hopeful futures.

        A Desperate Little Exhortation About (Bitter)Sweetness and Light

        Happy Endings

        A Bit of Hope

        Books for Hope

        Negativity Bias

        Toxic Positivity

        The Tolstoy Fallacy

        Writing the Future

        Ursula LeGuin Says It Right

        Art Changes People

        International Peace Day

        Writing While Stressed

Schindler's Landscapes

         Here’s a linoleum block print by Deborah Schindler (USA), entitled “Medieval Forest.”  It has a very interesting blend of organic and geometric forms, and in many ways seems more African than Medieval to me.  Compare, for example, with the work of Azaria Mbatha.  On the other hand, there are medieval illuminations that use a similar style of abstract designs to fill in backgrounds and borders, while foreground elements are laid out across them.  I wonder whether Schindler was drawing inspiration from specific works, or was just evoking this from her imagination.

        In another piece by Schindler, called “Homing Pigeons,” you can see the influence of medieval art in the icon-like shape of the birds, and the rotationally symmetric arrangement as of decorative tiles.  I like the way Schindler makes a connection between the modern and medieval worlds, a theme that appears frequently in her work.  Also interesting is the background pattern of lines that suggest the shapes of roofs, as if the entire landscape were wall-to-wall houses in every inch that isn’t highway.  Visually it makes an effective background against which both light highway and black pigeons can pop, but when you look closely it seems to add a commentary about the modern landscape.

        Modern highway with birds, or medieval forest without animals, both pieces by Schindler are interesting.

[Pictures: Medieval Forest, linoleum cut by Deborah Schindler;

Homing Pigeons, linoleum cut by Schindler (Images from WashingtonPrintmakers.com).]

Lum's Spirits

         Today’s wood block prints are by Bertha Lum (USA, 1869-1954).  Lum was one of many western artists who fell in love with eastern art at the end of the nineteenth century, but unlike many others, she followed her interest seriously.  She was first exposed to Japanese printmaking through Arthur Wesley Dow, who was responsible for teaching Japanese printmaking styles and techniques to many American artists, (including Frances Hammel Gearhart and Margaret Jordan Patterson).  Lum, however, went to the source.  In a seven-week(!) honeymoon to Japan she found a tutor and bought carving tools, and then a few years later she went back to Japan to work with a block cutter for two months and a printer for another month.  A few years after that she was back in Japan for another six months… and so on.  Later she also went to China to study woodcut methods there, and eventually split her time between California, China, and Japan for the rest of her life.

        Lum was interested not only in the art of Japan, but also in its mythology and legends, and she made a number of wood block prints illustrating spirits of various sorts.  To my eye, these pieces look to have a strong influence from both the Japanese woodcut tradition and also western illustration of the era.  Certainly they’re pleasing to western tastes.

        Today I’ve got three beings (god, spirit, and sprite) representing three elemental forces.  First up is the Spirit of the Sea.  This one has an interesting contrast between the serenity of the spirit contemplating the perfect pearl of a bubble on the gentle rings of smooth water, while behind rises a towering, breaking wave, which paradoxically looks equally serene even though presumably it’s about to come crashing down.  Of course, the Spirit of the Sea doesn’t need to worry about it in any case!

        From water we turn to the God of Fire.  I particularly like the dark, amorphous figures dancing around the blazing god.  They seem to be connected with the black rocks as if this is a volcanic scene, and the swoop of the flaming figure implies a forward movement as if he’s not just dancing in place but striding across the earth.  The subtle variations of colors add to the drama.

        The Wind Sprite also seems to be a spirit of the sea, revelling in the waves whipped into curling crests, and the gulls swooping through the air.  Despite the streaming clothes, the spirit itself is a still figure, standing quite peacefully in the midst of the gusts.  Lum’s choices about how to portray these spirits makes me start thinking about what choices I might make if I were to try my hand at illustrating them.  Would I show spirits so comfortable with their elements that they don’t seem to be working at all, as Lum does, or would I show them actively conducting and crafting the power and movement of their elements?

       If we wanted to round out the four classical elements, we’d need a spirit of earth, as well, but Lum doesn’t seem to have done one - or at least not that I saw.  Some of her other pieces depict characters that are specific to Japanese myths and legends, but these three don’t include names or referents.  Therefore I don’t know whether Lum was illustrating specific tales, or simply imagining spirits in a Japonisme style.  In any case, I like them and will probably be sharing a few more of Lum’s pieces in future posts as the occasion arises.

[Pictures: Spirit of the Sea, color woodcut by Bertha Lum, 1913;

God of Fire, color woodcut by Lum, 1929;

Wind Sprite, color woodcut by Lum, 1917, (Images from BerthaLum.org).]