Laforge #AtoZChallenge

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is Relief Printed Alphabet Squared, an alphabet of alphabets illustrated with relief block prints.  Find the master list of participating blogs here and see what adventures my fellow bloggers are offering this month.

        Lucien Laforge (France, 1889?-1952) never made it big as an artist, primarily working as a cartoonist for left-leaning newspapers.  You can see the cartoonist’s confident simplification  in his alphabet book from 1924, and you can sometimes see that touch of sharp satire, but for the most part it’s absolutely charming.  The black outlines were carved and printed from wood blocks, and the color was applied 

with the pochoir technique, which is a fancy word for stencils.  Being French, this

is another of those alphabets that doesn’t necessarily work in English, and L is for Lune, English moon.  I love the dark town with its red tile roofs, and blue church steeple against the night sky.  It so happens that this is probably my favorite letter from Laforge's alphabet, but I didn’t have any trouble picking a couple more to share as well.  F is Fantasmagorie, which I suppose works as F for Fantasy (rather than P for Phantasmagoria).  I think first of Cinderella’s coach, but who knows what story is being told here?  That’s the fun of it: imagining all sorts of different magical possibilities within this steeply angled and oddly stripy landscape.  Then I’ve also selected U for Usine, which

means factory.  This scene is not so idyllic with a menacing red sky, rivers of black smoke, and an aircraft flying over.  Still, it’s a bold and dramatic image.  One more of Laforge’s letters is still to come, and I’ll give you a hint: it works in English, as well.

        For the rest of the day we’re going back to the nineteenth century, where I have a few different types of alphabet book, all for the education and entertainment of good boys and girls.  Aunt Lely’s Picture Alphabet is one of those with detailed vignettes combining multiple words for each letter.  L is for Lamp, Light, Ladder, Lamp-lighter, Ladle and Loaf.  The anonymous artist has made an attempt to fit all the objects into plausible scenes, as you can see at K, but it hasn’t worked out so well for L.  For my favorite I’ve chosen the spread of S and T, because I particularly like the 

Snail.  I also like how the little verse includes some S adjectives in addition to nouns.  Later you’ll get a chance to see one of only two letters from this alphabet that does not illustrate multiple words.  (Can you guess which letters those would be?)

        The Lu Lu Alphabet is the sort of alphabet book that tries to tell a connected story for the letters to show up in.  Honestly, it’s not much of a story, and I don’t know why it’s called Lu Lu, since that doesn’t seem to be a character in the story.  Be that as it may, the Lady at L is indeed very elegant, with the feathered hat that was introduced in the book at F, and the children who first began to dance at D.  However, for my favorite I give you the spread of Y and Z because I’m so tickled that they all had to drive home in a carriage pulled by a zebra!

        And finally, as a bonus, The Ladder to Learning by Miss Lovechild, the sort of alphabet book that just lists words.  I like the somewhat crude charm of the wood block prints, but the crudeness of the painting isn’t nearly so charming.  You 

can see D, F, and Z in earlier posts, plus one of the fancy letters will be an icon in a later post, but for today here’s the Lion for L.

        The moral of L is to Look before you Leap.

        And also, don’t try harnessing a zebra to your carriage.  They really don’t like it.

        So, who do you think is in that phantasmagorical coach?  And where are they going?  And would it be even cooler if it was pulled by a team of zebras?

[Pictures: Lune, Fantasmagorie, Usine, wood block prints with pochoir by Lucien Laforge, 1924 (Images from Mille Feuilles de Bretagne, Ma Galerie a Paris, and Librairie Abraxis-Libris);

K, L, S, T, wood engravings from Aunt Lely’s Picture Alphabet, 1855-62 (Images from University of Washington);

Lady, Yeoman, Zebra, wood block prints from The Lu Lu Alphabet, 1867 (Images from University of California);

Lion, hand-colored wood block print from The Ladder to Learning, 1852 (Image from University of Maryland).]