Takushoku Graphic Arts

Graphic design posters by contemporary Japanese artists,

hosted by Takushoku University Arts Library [link]

All the images below were spliced together from screen shots. 

These images remain under copyright of the individual artist or their estate.

6th Contemporary Japanese Sculpture Exhibition,

1975 by Kiyoshi Awazu

3rd International Biennial Exhibition of Prints in Tokyo,

1962 by Ikko Tanaka

750th Anniversary of Nichiren Shu Buddhism,

2001 by Tadanori Yokoo

200th anniversary of Sharaku,

1995 by Yoshio Hayakawa

1965 → 2000 poster Gei-jutsu,

2000 by Tadanori Yokoo

'Dawn-Maroaka-ji of Japan' -Akaji Maro Dance Performance,

1983 by Kohei Suriura

Design Life,

1994 by Kazumasa Nagai

Exhibition decoration, weaving, dyeing of life

tree and Asia flower space - Floral Cosmology,

1992 by Kohei Sugiura

Freedom - Bicentennial of French Revolution,

1989 by UG Sato

Graphistes Tradition et Nouvelle Technique -

12 Graphistes Japonais (Les Ateliers),

1984 by Kohei Sugiura

Hiroshima Appeals,

1983 by Yusaku Kamekura

Kiyoshi Awazu Exhibition + Workshop,

1993 by Kiyoshi Awazu

Meiji Seika 'Meiji Milk Chocolate Deluxe' (amusement park),

1958 by Tadashi Ohashi

Part 4 Japan,

1988 by Kazumasa Nagai

Korean Traditional Art Troupe visit performances,

1983 by Kohei Sugiura

Where Can Nature Go,

1983 by UG Sato

Translation of (part of) collection introduction: "With the establishment of the Department of Industrial Design, in Hachioji campus library, we started collecting storage business of documentation on the design ("design Takushoku University library") from 1994 in Takushoku. Japan's "Design" and this is what for "lifestyle" research, collect material design more specific, is performed for the purpose of development and improvement of academic research and learning in the university. We aim to be a "base exchange of design" that connects Japan and the world through this activity in the future."

Takushoku University Graphic Arts Gallery
-- all images remain under copyright of the individual artist or their estate.

A Garland of Ragas

"This is an album (muraqqaʿ) compiled in the late 13th century AH / 19th CE, or possibly later. It contains nineteen Deccani paintings and four pages of shikastah calligraphy, one of which is dated 1211 AH / 1796 CE (f. The paintings, which date to the late 12th century AH / 18th CE or 13th century AH / 19th CE, come from a ragmala series attributable to the Deccan. A ragmala is a visualization of a musical mode or melody. This album contains a mix of visualizations of ragas (male musical modes) and raginis (female musical modes considered to be the wives of the male musical modes)." [Source: Walters Art Museum W. 669]

"Ragamala paintings are pages from a garland (mala) of visual melodies (ragas). Each page visualises a particular mode (five or more musical tones), and is frequently accompanied by a brief inscription or poem that suggests the time of day, season and even mood of the raga.

The transformation of expression from music, through poetry to painting was a gradual one, most likely stimulated by the invention of paper. Medieval musicians would associate each raga or mode with a deity and name it, perhaps as a means of memorising a melody. Intrigued poets of the late medieval period then personified these ragas and elaborated their tales in vivid verbal imagery. These stories along with other influential musical texts provided the poetic source for ragamala painting." [source: What is Ragamala?]

Sri Raga

Todi ragini

Asavari ragini

Female performing a ritual at night with a full moon

Shikastah^ calligraphy

Khambhavati ragini

Megha raga

Khambhavati ragini

Malavakausa raga 

(Malakausika, Malakausa, Malkos raga)

Dipaka raga (Dipak)

Bhairava raga

(possibly Vasanta ragini)

Vasanta ragini (Vasant)

An Indian woman, holding a fan, at a pond

Lalita ragini

Karnata ragini (Kanada ragini)

Hindola raga

Malava ragini

Nata ragini

(known in some sets as Sindhu ragini)

The writing surface of the album is 13.5cm x 21cm and features Persian as the primary language, written in the shikastah calligraphy script. There are 19 Indian Rajput-style miniatures together with borders of various colours, together with gold frames. The images above have been cropped back to the outer border and the colour saturation has been very mildly increased. The goatskin binding is not original and the manuscript came into the possession of Walters Art Museum from a bequest in the 1930s.

• Walters Ms. W.669, Album of Indian miniatures and Persian calligraphy is available online in full from Digital Waters at the Walters Art Museum.
• See previous post -- Ragamala Miniatures -- featuring a contemporary album from Western India. Both manuscripts have their aesthetic and stylistic merits and it's arguable which has the more exquisite, painted details. The older blog post has further general background commentary/links.
• Walters Art Museum has also posted the (uncropped) Ragamala album images to their Flickr account.
• Ragamala products at Amazon.
• This post first appeared on the BibliOdyssey website.

Russian Placards

Propaganda lithographs from 

'Russian Placards, Placard Russe 1917-1922' 

by Vladimir Lebedev, 1923

"The activities of the painter, designer, illustrator, and constructivist, Vladimir Lebedev, encompass a very broad period: from the early 1910s through to the early 1960s, and, consequently, his stylistic [oeuvre] connects with many different trends and avenues of inquiry. In fact, Lebedev started his artistic career as a graphic designer when he was only 14 years old by designing postcards for the Fietta Art Store on the Bolshaia Morskaia in St. Petersburg (his home town); and only a few years later he was already a prolific illustrator of popular and children's magazines[..]

Consciousness of the material of the work (the ink, the print, the lightness of the paper, the brilliant color of the poster's chromolithography) is [..] a condition that unites the various artistic experiences and concerns of Lebedev's career. For example, Lebedev's activity as a caricaturist for the St. Petersburg satirical journal, 'Novyi Satirikon' (New Satyricon) might seem to be quite contrary to his experimental compositions for the posters that he designed for Okna ROSTA (the display windows of the Russian Telegraph Agency) just after the Revolution. 

Chronologically, no more than two years divide these different endeavors since Lebedev began to work for 'Novyi Satirikon' in 1913, intensifying his contributions in 1917-18, while in 1920 he was already invited to participate in the Petrograd Okna ROSTA. Visually and stylistically, the two collaborations are very different, but, nevertheless, they both derive from a single sense of the integrity and inner logic of the graphic materials being employed."
['A Public Art: Caricatures and Posters of Vladimir Lebedev' by Nicoletta Misler IN: The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, Vol. 5, Russian/Soviet Theme Issue (Summer, 1987), pp. 60-75.]

The lamentation of the Entente

The union of village and town (workman and villager)

The red vision of Communism is brushing over Europe. 

The placard represents the bourgeois saving themselves from two workmen.

The Red Army and Navy defending Russia's borders.

The new bourgeoisie In the Republic of labour (threat to the proletarian State)

The Entente gives suck to Koltchak. Entente— a puppit (sic) 

decorated with a garland and the Tower of Eiffel, 

the latter with British and French flags on It. Koltchak 

in a three-cornered a pistol case on his back.

Productive propaganda. 

A caster with a casting spoon in his hands, a mould in the left corner.

Agitation for utilizing the bourgeoisie for proletarian purpose. 

The bourgeois in a grey top-hat and apron waits 

upon the workman (feeds him with fish).

Agitation for the closing of markets- "the marauder in heaven and the simpleton in hell". 

The placard represents an owner of a market- stall sitting in a grand house 

at a table with provisions and a gramophone standing on it, 

while a starving citisen under the table is defending the markets.

A work-woman. (Raising productivity through joining 

together small hand-working and trade industries).

A workman with nationalised entreprises in his hands.

A workman sweeping the criminal elements out of the Republic (work conrol).

A marauder at a stall with wares (the struggle against sale in the streets).

A bourgeois tearing his hair on account of the 

second meeting of the International Congress.

"In contradistinction to the satirical drawings of 1913-18, which, basically, still derive from the Decadent culture of the European and Russian Fin de Siècle, the ROSTA posters of 1920-22
rely on different external stimuli. These examples of "public art" are organized according to the juxtaposition of simple colored masses floating against the white background of the paper, i.e., they depend upon a much more abstract and austere formal arrangement for their effect. 

True, some of the ROSTA posters are also satirical and caricatural, but they are very different from the drawings in 'Novyi Satirikon'. For many reasons, they signalled a turning point in Lebedev's artistic biography, and it is not by chance that they evolved after his encounter with cubism."
['A Public Art: Caricatures and Posters of Vladimir Lebedev' by Nicoletta Misler IN: The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, Vol. 5, Russian/Soviet Theme Issue (Summer, 1987), pp. 60-75.]

{for clarity, some very minor grammatical changes  were made to the quotes by Misler}

• 'Russian placards, 1917-1922' by Vladimir Lebedev, 1923 is available in html and pdf formats from Dartmouth College Library. (the images above derive from the html layout - they have been cropped back to the page margin and the colour saturation has been bumped up lightly)
• 'Russian placards, 1917-1922' by Vladimir Lebedev 1923 is also available in full from the Wolfsonian-FIU Miami website [thumbnail images of the whole book including all approx. 26 lithographs]
• MoMA biography of Lebedev | Wikipedia |
• Russian Placards by Lebedev at Amazon.
• An original 1923 edition of Lebedev's Placard book sold for >$US4K in 2000.
• British Library - Russian Posters research site.
• **Ne boltai!** "This website provides thousands of selections from a large archive of political propaganda—mainly works on paper—produced by artists in the Soviet Union and its satellites" (note exhibitions!).
• Large collection of digitised Russian futurist books from the State Public Historical Library of Russia (via Ptak Science Books post -->  @ptak).
• Thanks KH! I owe you a vodka. Or 3.
• This post first appeared on the BibliOdyssey website.

Monograms & Ciphers

A sampling of monograms, ciphers, labels, 

logos and devices, including: two-letter, 

three-letter, ampersand, sacred, year date & 

corporate designs. The vast majority of illustration 

plates in the book depict two-letter monograms.

"There is to-day a growing taste for severe chaste forms in printing types and lettering; the same influence is also directing a change of style in the more decorative Monogram and Cipher. The florid combinations of the last two centuries are gradually falling into disuse, and are giving place to the very simplest forms. The aim of the present work is towards simplicity, but in order that the book may appeal to various tastes, and thus be of greater value, examples of many styles are included.Each of these styles, while based on some familiar form which has long been in use, has had its pruning, and as much of the superfluous flourish not necessary to letter or design has been discarded. 

The styles included may be classed under five principal heads—Roman, Gothic, Sans Serif, Cursive or Running, and what I might call Rustic. These styles are treated in various ways, and in light and heavy letters. Here and there throughout the work a design will be found that may suggest a treatment for some particular device. These are odd pieces that have occurred to me as the plates were in progress, the execution of most of which would probably be more satisfactory in embroidery than any other medium.

There are three principal forms of treating a device; I will call them the Imposed, Extended, and the Continuous forms. By the Imposed form I mean a design where the letters are written or interlaced directly over one another. In the Extended form the letters are interlaced or written side by side. In the Continuous form the device runs from beginning to end without a break. In the Imposed form the principal letter, whether it is first or final, should be accentuated, either by making it slightly larger, heavier, or in some other way best suited to the material in which it is being produced, it may be colour or texture. For the Extended form, if the letters are to be read in the order in which they follow one another, all may be treated alike. In this form, however, it is often advisable, for design and balance, especially when filling a circular space, to place the principal letter in the centre; in that case it may be drawn larger, and in some other way made more important. The Continuous form should read as the letters would be written, and care must betaken to place them so that they will not appear to read in some other way.

It is intended that the Monograms and Ciphers shown in the following plates be considered as outlines only, as models or working drawings. The solid or tint grounds need not be taken as part of the design; they are intended to show which are planned in a round, and which in a square panel. There are but a few cases in which any detail is given that would apply to a particular craft, or suggest the material in which they are to be worked. Each artist or craftsman can use the forms, supplying his own detail to suit the technique of the work in hand. By this means the book should be equally useful to any craft. With this broad rendering it will be noticed that some of the designs do not appear to read in the order described; in such cases the important letter requires that detail which I have suggested in some instances with a tint or black. [..] 

A Monogram^ is a combination of two or more letters, in which one letter forms part of another and cannot be separated from the whole. A Cipher is merely an interlacing or placing together of two or more letters, being in no way dependent for their parts on other of the letters."

[AA Turbayne, Introductory Note, 'Monograms & Ciphers', dated 1912]

"Albert Angus Turbayne (1866-1940) was an American book designer and bookbinding artist. Turbayne was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He worked in London for the London County Council School of Photoengraving and Lithography and also for Carlton Studio. His principal artistic work was the design of books and bindings. He won a bronze medal for book binding design at the Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris." [source]

I am grateful to my (new) brother-in-law, Colin, for lending me his early edition copy of 'Monograms & Ciphers' by AA Turbayne (1912) from which the above (slightly cropped) images have been scanned. I scanned a whole lot more illustration plates from the book which I'll probably upload somewhere in the near future. The first edition of this book was published in 1905 with equal title credit given to the Carlton Studio Artists, but it didn't have an introductory note and the number of illustrations in that edition is unknown. I presume the 1912 edition became/is the definitive version.

• Amazon lists a number of different editions of 'Monograms & Ciphers', including recently published versions.
• A complete 1906 edition, with modest-sized (?microfilm) scans of all the illustration plates, is available from Project Gutenberg -- this edition includes an identical introductory note to that found in the 1912 edition that I have with me. Oddly, the 1912 introductory note bears a precise writing date in January 1912 (The 1906 & 1912 editions were both printed in Edinburgh, but by different printers) I don't know the reason(s) for these apparent minor aberrations.
• A few of Turbayne's Art Nouveau book cover designs are on display at the Royal Academy of Arts website.
• Minor mention of Turbayne is made in this 1966 article, 'Book Illustration and Design By Canadian Artists 1890-1940 with a list of books illustrated by members of the Group of Seven by Sybille Pantazzi' IN: The National Gallery of Canada Bulletin. [Some of the Canadian artists ended up joining the Carlton Studio in London during Turbayne's time there].
• If anyone hopes to find a monogram of initials to adopt as their own, remember the order doesn't matter in a 2-letter monogram. There is no PK, but there is a KP. That'll do me.