Cards as Fantasy

         Pretty much as long as there have been playing cards in Europe, since the 14th century, they have been used for fortune-telling.  This should come as no surprise because humans seem to be willing to use practically anything to try to divine the future.  To look back at the history of playing cards, you can do a quick review of my post on Cards as Block Prints.  To look at some of the wide array of things that have been used for prophecy, read my post on Words of the Future.  I want to state at the outset of this post that although there are people who find the use of cards (especially oracle decks like tarot) to be useful in helping them focus on their intuitions and subconscious, I believe that any actual magic ascribed to fortune-telling or fortune-telling cards is pure fantasy, and that’s precisely why I’m interested in it here in my blog about fantasy.

        With that, let’s begin with the reminder that early playing cards in Europe were not standardized, and often included illustrations on all the cards, not just the face cards that have pictures in a standard deck today.  (You can see a sampling of these charming illustrations in the previous post.)  Around 1420 a Duke of Milan commissioned a deck of cards that included a fifth suit of 16 trump cards illustrated with Greco-Roman gods.  This is the earliest known appearance of such a suit of trumps, and it was followed by variations throughout most of Europe, all of which were used for trick-taking games.  Presumably they were also used for fortune-telling, just as other playing cards were, but they were not specially designed for the purpose.

        The invention of the printing press simultaneously spread cards more widely and made them more standardized.  The Tarot of Marseille (which originated in Milan in the early fifteenth century but was being manufactured in Marseille in the nineteenth century) became a standard that is used to this day both for games and for divination.  It includes 56 cards in 5 suits: swords, cups, coins, batons, and trumps.

        Not until 1781, when Antoine Court de Gébelin published an essay claiming that the tarot cards had a special occult connection with ancient Egyptian wisdom, did the idea spread that there was some particular esoteric significance to the tarot deck.  Once the idea was started, however, it was embraced with enormous enthusiasm.  In 1785 Jean-Baptiste Alliette (aka Etteilla) published a highly influential book about divination using the tarot deck, and in 1789 he published his own deck designed especially for occult use.  Ever since, new versions of decks have been designed to emphasize their magical meanings.  Despite these French origins of the idea, it’s in the English-speaking world that we look on the tarot deck as being exclusively for divination, since we have never had a tradition of playing the games for which the decks were invented.  One of the most famous and foundational modern decks, the Rider-Waite Tarot, was published in 1909, designed by members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret society dedicated to occultism.

        I’ve got a lot of pictures to share, and I’m starting with some of the very early hand-painted cards, which demonstrate why decks of cards (magic or mundane) were luxury items before they were printed.  There are two versions of the World card, plus a card probably from the wands suit, which I picked because he appears to have a pet basilisk.  And then I’ve got some early printed cards all from one deck: the Popess, Star, and Magician.

        Next is a collection of trumps from  seventeenth and eighteenth century printed decks, all of which are pretty crude compared with the painted and illuminated works of art with which we started.  The entire first row comes from one deck, and demonstrates that the modern subjects of the cards were by no means mandatory.  XIII in this deck is Death, which is true in some other decks, as well, including the last card on the bottom row (which I picked because it looks so oddly friendly).  I’m guessing XXIIII is Justice, which is a subject that appears in many other decks, but not with that number (and why does it have a weasel on the scales and a hedgehog below?)  However, the others don’t seem to correspond with any of the standard modern trumps, so hold that thought because it will be important when I get to a future post.  On the second row I’ve got the Devil, then the Emperor and Justice from one garishly painted deck, and then Bacchus.  He replaces the Pope in an otherwise fairly standard deck, and this, too, was not too unusual.  The Pope and the Woman Pope or Popess seem to have been a little controversial in areas where Catholics and Protestants were in direct conflict, and they were sometimes switched out for various different figures - but I think replacing the Pope with Bacchus is kind of funny.

        Carrying on with a variety of decks that follow the fairly standard tarot assortment, I’ve got a Magician with a fabulous outfit and an array of interesting props on his table; the High Priestess (in place of the Popess) from the famous Rider-Waite Tarot; and Lovers from a deck of much higher quality woodcuts than those in the last grouping.  I chose the Devil in the next row because it looks so nicely different from the one above, Temperance because she’s a really lovely woodcut, and the Star from a deck printed with more modern nineteenth century methods.  She has particularly nice scenery.  The cards in the bottom row show a double-ended deck, which shows you that it was really for playing card games rather than fortune-telling, but these are consistent with the now-standard tarot cards: Death again, the Tower (which looks doubly catastrophic when it’s falling down from both ends), and the Star with very different iconography from the one above.  (You can also see that the two Stars are numbered differently.)

        Generally I’m only interested in the Major Arcana: the trumps (including the Fool) because in a lot of decks the Minor Arcana looks too much like a regular deck of cards to scratch my itch for magic.  However there are decks - mostly among the older ones and the newer ones - that give every card its own interesting and potentially magical picture.  In the same deck from which I shared the Lovers above, the knave-equivalent face cards in each suit are some sort of hybrid mythical creature.  The one for cups is especially intriguing, since it combines human with fish tail, mammal forepaws, and bird wings.  Then I have the 2 and 9 of swords from the Rider-Waite deck, which both look Highly Significant, just as a deck of occult mysteries should.  And the last card in this group is the 6 of cups from the Thoth Deck, another influential reimagining from another one-time member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.  This one leans hard into almost Rorschach-like imagery.

        Although I’ve naturally spent a lot of time in this post on the decks that are more directly related to what is now called the tarot, that’s never been the only option when you’re looking for mystical meanings in cards.  One whole branch of decks made for the tarocchi card game used animals for the trumps, and the choice of animals was pretty wide open.  I’ve chosen several fantastical versions from different decks, a unicorn, a seahorse-unicorn, and a double-ended card in which the two sides are different, combining a dragon and a bat.  In the second row are two more cards from the deck that you should be able to recognize from earlier: a salamander for card XX and “Fame Flies” for an unnumbered card.  And then I’ve given you four cards from a deck that had a whole theme of merpeople.  In card XIV we’ve got the mer version of Carmen Miranda, while card XV has an alchemist with a mermaid and sea lion, XVI has a merman hoisting some kind of crazy fish, and card XIX has a gorgeous pagoda along with a couple of beautiful mermaids.  These decks, despite their magical imagery, were designed and produced primarily for playing cards rather than for any occult purposes.

        So then finally we come to the not-quite-tarot decks that were actually designed with the intention of using them for divination.  The Game of Hope was invented in Germany around 1799 and came with a booklet that gave instructions for using the deck either to play a parlor game or for divination.  The first two cards in this last batch come from one of these decks and you can see that each card has both a picture to which meanings can be ascribed and also insets with regular cards with both German and French suits.  The Game of Hope was adopted by Marie Anne Lenormand, who became a wildly famous and successful fortune-teller after the French Revolution.  (She claimed to have read cards for various leaders of the French Revolution, as well as Empress Josephine and Tsar Alexander I.)  Her success led to many versions of these decks being marketed as Lenormand decks for fortune-telling, and the ship comes from one such, while the key comes from another that dispensed with the inset playing card design and instead added little rhyming proverbs.  The last two cards here were designed by the celebrity fortune teller I mentioned at the beginning of this post: Etteilla, from roughly the same era as Lenormand.

        So now we’ve had the history of block printing cards, and we’ve had the future as foretold by cards, but there’s still more cartomancy to come.  My next trick will be to give you Words of the Month connected with cards and cartomancy.

[Pictures: World, from the Este tarocchi cards, paint and illumination, Italy, ca. 1450 (Image from Yale Beinecke Library);

World, from the Visconti di Modrone tarocchi cards, paint and illumination by Bonifacio Bembo, Italy, 1442-47 (Image from Yale Beinecke Library);

XVI (something of wands?) from the Sola Busca tarot deck, painted, Italy, 1491 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Popess, Star, Magician, wood block print cards, Italy, ca. 1550, (Image from Yale Beinecke Library);

5 cards from a tarot pack, wood block prints, Italy, ca. 1675 (Image from The British Museum);

Le Diable from the tarot deck of Jean Dodal, France, 1701-15 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

L’Empereur and Justice from tarot pack, wood block prints, Switzerland, 1783 (Image from The British Museum);

Bacus from tarot pack, wood block print, pub. by Jean Gisaine, Flemish, 18th century (Image from The British Museum);

XIII (Death) from tarot pack, wood block print, Germany, 18th century (image from The British Museum);

Il Bagatto from tarot deck, wood block print with stencil, pub. by F.F. Solesio, Italy, 1865 (Image from Bibliothèque nationale de France);

The High Priestess, 2 of Swords, 9 of Swords from Rider-Waite tarot deck, illustrations by Pamela Coleman Smith to design by Arthur Edward Waite, 1909 (Image from WaiteSmith.org);

V (Lovers), Knave of Swords, Knave of Cups, Knave of Coins, XX (Salamander), Fama Volat from minchiate deck, wood engraving with stencil, pub. by A. Baragioli, Italy, 1860-90 (Image from Bibliothèque nationale de France);

Le Diable from Les Récréations de la Cartomancie by Mlle Lemarchand, 1867 (Image from Bibliothèque nationale de France);

Temperance from a Venetian tarot deck, wood block print, Italy, undated (before 1896) (Image from The British Museum);

Le Stelle card from tarocchi deck, chromolithograph pub. by Fratelli Avondo, Italy, 19th century (Image from The British Museum);

Death, Tower, Star cards from tarocchino deck, woodcut pub. by Germano Natali, Italy, early 19th century (Image from The British Museum);

Six of Cups from Thoth Tarot deck, illustration by Frieda Harris as designed by Aleister Crowley, 1944 (Image from Crowley-Thoth.com);

VII (Unicorn) card from tarok pack, wood block print pub. by Johann Gottlob Hegewalt, German, ca. 1770 (Image from The British Museum);

VIII (crocodile/Bat) card from tarok pack, wood cut pub. by Joseph Fetscher, German, late 19th century (Image from The British Museum);

IX (Sea Unicorn) card from tarok pack, woodcut, German, late 19th century (IMage from The British Museum);

XIV, XV, XVI, XIX cards from tarok pack, woodcuts pub. by Johan Norbert Hofmann, German, 19th century (Image from The British Museum);

19, 20 cards from Das Spiel der Hoffnung, etchings pub. by GPJ Bieling, German, 1800-50 (Image from The British Museum);

3 (10 of Spades) card from a Lenormand deck, ca. 1890 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

33 (Success, key) card from Wahrsagekarten Lenormand deck, color lithograph pub. by Ch. Didot, French, ca. 1890 (Image from Yale Beinecke Library);

48 (Amour), 1 (Etteilla) cards from Etteilla deck designed by Jean-Baptise Alliette (aka Etteilla), ca. 1840-90 (Image from WaiteSmith.org).]

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 wood block printed 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 sixth 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.]