Earthworm Pavilion.

Nature Concert Hall is an interactive, educational multi-media event on nature and sustainable development held each year in a different location in Latvia. Every year is curated with a particular species as its “mascot” and Didzis Jaunzems Architecture was asked to base this year’s pavilion on the earthworm.

The architects responded with a structure designed to tell the story of the earthworm and its underground world. Three openings cut into the pavilion imitate worm-holes, while the sinuous patterning on the dark background reflects the creatures in their subterranean habitat.

[…]

“After the event there are absolutely no marks of the event that happened at the site day before – a completely empty and clean floodplain is left, contrary to the garbage-covered fields that are left after any other traditional festival,” added the architect.

The various elements of science, visual art, music, and dramaturgy included in the festival work holistically to tell the story of the earthworm in nature, ultimately aiming to not only give visitors new knowledge about nature, but to also motivate them to take action for environmental protection.

You can read all about this fascinating project here, and there’s video! Have a wonder filled wander.

Mira calligraphiae monumenta.

Joris Hoefnagel (Flemish / Hungarian, 1542 – 1600), and Georg Bocskay (Hungarian, died 1575)
Medlar, Poppy Anemone, and Pear, 1561 – 1562; illumination added 1591 – 1596, Watercolors, gold and silver paint, and ink on parchment. Leaf: 16.6 × 12.4 cm (6 9/16 × 4 7/8 in.) The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Joris Hoefnagel (Flemish / Hungarian, 1542 – 1600), and Georg Bocskay (Hungarian, died 1575)
Crane Fly and Ants, 1561 – 1562; illumination added 1591 – 1596, Watercolors, gold and silver paint, and ink on parchment. Leaf: 16.6 × 12.4 cm (6 9/16 × 4 7/8 in.) The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Joris Hoefnagel (Flemish / Hungarian, 1542 – 1600), and Georg Bocskay (Hungarian, died 1575)
Basil Thyme, Poppy Anemone, and Myrtle, 1561 – 1562; illumination added 1591 – 1596, Watercolors, gold and silver paint, and ink on parchment. Leaf: 16.6 × 12.4 cm (6 9/16 × 4 7/8 in.) The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Joris Hoefnagel (Flemish / Hungarian, 1542 – 1600), and Georg Bocskay (Hungarian, died 1575)
Queen of Spain Fritillary, Apple, Mouse, and Creeping Forget-Me-Not, 1561 – 1562; illumination added 1591 – 1596, Watercolors, gold and silver paint, and ink on parchment. Leaf: 16.6 × 12.4 cm (6 9/16 × 4 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Joris Hoefnagel (Flemish / Hungarian, 1542 – 1600), and Georg Bocskay (Hungarian, died 1575)
Rocket Larkspurs, Tulip, Scorpion, Millepede, and European Filbert, 1561 – 1562; illumination added 1591 – 1596, Watercolors, gold and silver paint, and ink on parchment. Leaf: 16.6 × 12.4 cm (6 9/16 × 4 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

In the 1500s, as printing became the most common method of producing books, intellectuals increasingly valued the inventiveness of scribes and the aesthetic qualities of writing. From 1561 to 1562, Georg Bocskay, the Croatian-born court secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, created this Model Book of Calligraphy in Vienna to demonstrate his technical mastery of the immense range of writing styles known to him.

About thirty years later, Emperor Rudolph II, Ferdinand’s grandson, commissioned Joris Hoefnagel to illuminate Bocskay’s model book. Hoefnagel added fruit, flowers, and insects to nearly every page, composing them so as to enhance the unity and balance of the page’s design. It was one of the most unusual collaborations between scribe and painter in the history of manuscript illumination.

Because of Hoefnagel’s interest in painting objects of nature, his detailed images complement Rudolph II’s celebrated Kunstkammer, a cabinet of curiosities that contained bones, shells, fossils, and other natural specimens. Hoefnagel’s careful images of nature also influenced the development of Netherlandish still life painting.

In addition to his fruit and flower illuminations, Hoefnagel added to the Model Book a section on constructing the letters of the alphabet in upper- and lowercase.

Every page of these works are absolutely exquisite, in all aspects. There are a lot of them, too! You can see them all here, and they are free to download in several sizes.

A Young Daughter of the Picts (ca. 1585)

Originally thought to be one of John White’s drawings from his 16th-century Virginia expedition, this colourful miniature is now attributed to the French artist Jacques Le Moyne. It does not show a North American native as first thought but rather imagines an early inhabitant of the British Isles, a member of the Picts, a group of people who lived in what is now modern-day Scotland during the Late Iron Age and Early Medieval periods. As Lisa Ford from the Yale Center for British Art notes, the image was most likely “intended to remind readers that early natives of the British Isles existed in a savage state similar to natives in the Americas”. Although the Picts are often said to have tattooed themselves, there is little actual evidence for this, though their name does seem to stem from the Latin word Picti meaning “painted or tattooed people”. As Ford comments, Le Moyne’s rendering of this young woman in a head-to-toe floral tattoo brings together his “two known subject areas, ethnological drawings and botanicals”. Anyone clued up on their history of botany will notice that Le Moyne includes in his floral design species which were newly introduced to Western Europe at the time, and so rendering the woman in the picture slightly anachronistic.

No basis in reality, but a beautiful image. Via The Public Domain.

Victorian London’s Dirty Book Trade.

19th-century “French postcard” from the personal collection of the German-Austrian psychiatrist and early sexologist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing — Source.

Title page to an 1891 edition of The Story of a Dildoe! — Source. The full book is available, in English.

The Public Domain has a fascinating article on Holywell Street, home of the Victorian porn trade. There’s much to see, and read.

Victorian sexuality is often considered synonymous with prudishness, conjuring images of covered-up piano legs and dark ankle-length skirts. Historian Matthew Green uncovers a quite different scene in the sordid story of Holywell St, 19th-century London’s epicentre of erotica and smut.

(Tentative warning: the essay includes some mildly explicit content, both text and image, which may not be suitable for all ages and dispositions!)*

*Having read the article, there’s some very explicit language, not all of it nice. If you’re sensitive to that sort of thing, have a care. And there are a host of pictures, lots of nudity.

Via The Public Domain.

The Intrigue of Medieval Art.

Page from the calendar of the Très Riches Heures showing the household of John, Duke of Berry exchanging New Year gifts. The Duke is seated at the right, in blue.

As is my wont, I found myself distracted by, and lost in yet another illuminated Medieval manuscript, a gorgeous Book of hours.

The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (English: The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry), is the most famous and possibly the best surviving example of French Gothic manuscript illumination, showing the late International Gothic phase of the style. It is a book of hours: a collection of prayers to be said at the canonical hours. It was created between c. 1412 and 1416 for the extravagant royal bibliophile and patron John, Duke of Berry, by the Limbourg brothers. When the three painters and their sponsor died in 1416, possibly victims of plague, the manuscript was left unfinished. It was further embellished in the 1440s by an anonymous painter, who many art historians believe was Barthélemy d’Eyck. In 1485–1489, it was brought to its present state by the painter Jean Colombe on behalf of the Duke of Savoy. Acquired by the Duc d’Aumale in 1856, the book is now MS 65 in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, France.

Consisting of a total of 206 leaves of very fine quality parchment, 30 cm in height by 21.5 cm in width, the manuscript contains 66 large miniatures and 65 small. The design of the book, which is long and complex, has undergone many changes and reversals. Many artists contributed to its miniatures, calligraphy, initials, and marginal decorations, but determining their precise number and identity remains a matter of debate. Painted largely by artists from the Low Countries, often using rare and costly pigments and gold, and with an unusually large number of illustrations, the book is one of the most lavish late medieval illuminated manuscripts.

After three centuries in obscurity, the Très Riches Heures gained wide recognition in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, despite having only very limited public exposure at the Musée Condé. Its miniatures helped to shape an ideal image of the Middle Ages in the collective imagination, often being interpreted to serve political and nationalist agendas. This is particularly true for the calendar images, which are the most commonly reproduced. They offer vivid representations of peasants performing agricultural work as well as aristocrats in formal attire, against a background of remarkable medieval architecture.

It’s two of the calendar images which caught my attention. I generally gravitate to November first, it being my birth month. Unlike most months, this had no descriptor of a place, no great estate or palace. Then I noticed February was the same. Just the name of the month. These are the two oddest of the calendar leaves, too.

©Photo. R.M.N. / R.-G. OjŽda. Click for full size.

This is November. Okay, out with the pigs hunting truffles, or just letting the pigs stuff themselves silly on whatever that is on the ground. The pigs certainly look happy over their master’s inattention, and it’s that inattention which baffles me. What in the hell is he glaring at, with such a posture? His gaze goes directly to the tree tops, where I’m afraid I can’t spy anything ominous at all. I guess this made sense way back when, but it doesn’t make sense to me.

Now we visit February, and warming genitals by the fire:

©Photo. R.M.N. / R.-G. OjŽda. Click for full size.

There’s all manner of wonderful weirdness in this one. That massive bed, for one. That seems to be unusually generous lodging for servants. Then there’s the man barely dressed out in the freezing cold; the woman and cat having a staring contest, and of course, the gigantic fire, where people are happily toasting their genitals. I’ve been cold. Very, very cold, and it’s never once occurred to me to toast the bits.

You can see much more here.