XXXerotica: illustrated books

Posts tonen met het label illustrated books. Alle posts tonen

zaterdag 11 juli 2009

Ancient Greek Erotic

Today a scan of a set of glass mats I once bought on Crete. It's not old, but the pictures on it are.

I bought the set together with a nice book about a related topic: "La Vie Amoureuse de Grecs Anciens" by Sofia A. Souli. Perhaps I once will make scans of illustrations from it. For now you may be pleased with a scan of the cover:

donderdag 2 juli 2009

Idylle Printanière - Spring Ydill

This time a "book without words." The author of the original publication is unknown, but specialists all agree that the etchings can be attributed to "Rojan," pseudonym for Feodor Stepanovich Rojankovsky.

Latvian artist Feodor Rojankovsky, known as 'Rojan', worked in Paris in the '20s and '30s. Famous as a children's book illustrator, his other artistic endeavours were perhaps less well-known but no less appreciated: Rojan regularly illustrated erotic fiction and his output was impressive. His erotic drawings enlivened the poetry of Raymond Radiguet and Pierre Louys as well as many others of the golden age of French erotica.
His chef d'oeuvre, however, has always been considered to be Idylle Printanière (Spring Idyll; published by ER Books as Paris Spring 1933, a "story without words" telling of an encounter between two elegant travellers who meet on a platform on the Paris Metro. Passing in a taxi through the Paris of Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, the couple are soon passionately entwined... Delivered to a maison de passe they consummate their mutual lust with more privacy - but no less less frantic urgency.
This art-deco masterpiece has lost none of its original fire and brilliance. The original 1933 edition, comprising only 516 sets, is now almost unobtainable and has fetched up to £2,500 at auction.
(text from EPS).

I made the scans from the Dutch version of a cobined Italian-Spanish-Dutch publication of the year 2000.

The book itself has a grey cover, imitating the original.

But the book has an illustrated "dust jacket," this is the one for the Dutch version:

And now the "real" content:

Frontispiece

Illustrations:

donderdag 25 juni 2009

Erotic Alphabets

Today I will bring you two erotic alphabets. The first one is a scan of a copy-print.

I found it in a Dutch Erotic Encyclopedia, but you can also find it in:

"Aphrodisiacs, An Encyclopedia of Erotic Wisdom" Guild Publishing, London 1990

The second one is:

Animerotics: A Forbidden Cabaret in 26 Acts (short story by Wendy Ice & David Delamare).

In 1894 wealthy eccentric Alphonse Zukor shocked European society by mounting an illegal underground cabaret--an alphabetic series of erotic acts featuring beautiful nude women and exotic animals. The bizarre performances changed the world by attracting and influencing such luminaries as Thomas Edison, Sigmund Freud, and Igor Stravinksy. In this lavish volume, artist David Delamare deftly recreates each of the cabaret's darkly alluring show cards. A living mermaid, a fire breathing tiger tamer, the knife throwing Donatello twins, and a Houdini inspired escape from an octopus tank are just a few of the twenty-six seductive acts captured in these sensual sepia tone paintings. An expert showman, Delamare spins a fantastical tale of creative obsession and singular vision to lure audience members into his own smoky kaleidoscopic world. At curtain's close they are left wondering whether they've witnessed an actual slice of history or an artist's sleight of hand.

I once had a set of HiRes images, but after my hard drive once crashed I now only have an A4 print of the image above, nevertheless I have been cutting it into pieces and gave the letters a caption, partially original (from the author), partially due to my own analysis.