Day 4: Barry Moser in Fairy Tale Art: Illustrations from Children's Books

Barry Moser is our fourth illustrator from the Fairy Tale Art: Illustrations from Children's Books exhibit. You can read more about Moser on Wikipedia (great for more links) or on his own website, here's an excerpt:

BARRY MOSER was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1940. He was educated at a military academy there, The Baylor School, then at Auburn University and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He did graduate work at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1970. He studied with George Cress, Leonard Baskin, Fred Becker, and Jack Coughlin. His work is represented in numerous collections, museums, and libraries in the United States and abroad, including The National Gallery of Art, Washington, The Metropolitan Museum, The British Museum, The Library of Congress, The National Library of Australia, The London College of Printing, The Pierpont Morgan Library, The Vatican Library, Harvard University, Yale University, Dartmouth College, Cambridge University, the Israel Museum and Princeton University to name a few. Mr. Moser has exhibited internationally in both one-man and group exhibits. He is a member of the Society of Printers, Boston; an Associate of the National Academy of Design elected in 1982; made full Academician in 1994; and was a founding trustee of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. He was awarded the Doctor of Fine Arts degree by Westfield State College, Westfield, Massachusetts (1999), the Doctor of Humanities degree by Anna Maria College, Paxton, Massachusetts (2001), and the Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, Massachusetts (2003).

I'm always happy to find a native Tennessean, I even spent seven years of my childhood in Chattanooga although I am mostly a Nashvillian.

Now on to the images:

From The Three Silly Billies

From The Three Silly Billies

From Earthquack!

From Earthquack!

From Lewis Carroll's Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (The Pennyroyal Edition as designed and illustrated by Barry Moser)

From Alice in Wonderland

From Alice in Wonderland

From Alice in Wonderland

Featured books:

  

Other books:

  
  

 

Fairytale Reflections Gillian Philip at SMoST

Today's post at SMoST is Fairytale Reflections (15) Gillian Philip. Philip chose one of my favorite tales, one that I didn't learn until my teenage years when I read Joan D Vinge's version in Imaginary Lands edited by Robin McKinley. Later, my fascination was solidified after reading Pamela Dean's novelization of the tale in editor Terri Windling's Fairy Tale series.

That tale is, of course, Tam Lin.

Here's an excerpt from Philip's thoughts about the tale. As always click through to read it in its entirety:

As a child I don’t think I was aware of the story of TAM LIN, one of many mortal men stolen away by the Queen of the Faeries. I’m not even sure when I first read or heard such tales; stories of the faery people were simply a kind of background music that I gradually noticed and that came to fascinate me. Tam Lin is just one variation on a theme that sometimes has a happy ending, more often less so: a mortal – more often than not a man – is foolish or brave or naive enough to go away with the faeries.

There’s a recurring notion that once involved with the People of Peace, you’re going to need all your wits, courage and – usually – the help of a friend to get away. More often than not, even all of those aren’t enough, and that makes many of the stories melancholy.

Tam Lin is a little different, and that’s why I’m fond of it. The traditional ballad begins with a warning not to go to the woods of Carterhaugh, because young Tam Lin is there – a man who was taken by the Queen of the Faeries, who now protects their sacred woods, and who will demand a penalty of anyone who trespasses. Earlier versions are pretty clear about what that penalty will be... and when young Janet, whose father nominally owns the wood, dares to go there to pick roses, she comes back not just wildly in love, but pregnant.

Now for some of Philip's own books:

  

The image at the top of the page is by Dan Dutton and can be found on the excellent Tam Lin website (the best resource on the web for learning about the tale) or at Dutton's website. The second is by Charles Mikolaycak from his illustrations for Jane Yolen's picture book of Tam Lin.
 
Thanks again to Katherine Langrish for an excellent series.

Fairytale Reflections (14) Celia Rees at SMoST

I missed posting Fairytale Reflections (14) Celia Rees at SMoST due to the holidays, but today we get to also read the new Fairytale Reflections (15) Gillian Philip which I will give its own post in a moment.

Rees chose a tale I am almost completely ignorant of which made me appreciate her all the more--I love to learn and she inspired me. She wrote about Blodeuedd, a story from the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion. I have a copy of the Mabinogion on my shelf with many good intentions to always read it carefully instead of giving it a casual perusal, but time and other demands have continued to hamper me.

Here's an excerpt from Rees article, click through to read it all and more about her own work, too:

Blodeuedd is a story from the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion. I first came across it when I was eleven or twelve years old and reading my way through the Myths, Legends and Fairy Tales section of the school library. There, I discovered Lady Charlotte Guest’s translation of the Mabinogion, that great collection of Welsh stories [this is a link to a free online version]. I was familiar with Greek myths and legends, stories of the Norse gods, but these tales were new to me and they were our stories, stories from the British Isles. There were familiar characters, I recognised King Arthur, but this was not the Arthur I knew. There was a strangeness here and a power. Many of the stories did not make sense on first reading; there was a denseness about them, a feeling that the tales contained many stories, concentrated and packed together. This did not detract from my enjoyment. It merely added to the mystery. Here were kings, queens, magicians and shape shifters, golden ships, magic cauldrons, giants and dragons but behind them it was possible to sense something far more ancient, darker: more dangerous and more powerful.

I have continued to be fascinated by the Mabinogion, by its elusiveness and by its hints at other meanings, the remnants of a much more ancient storytelling tradition reaching back into an otherwise unknowable pre-history. The Mabinogion has proved a rich source of raw material for many of our greatest fantasy writers: Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Susan Cooper and, of course, Alan Garner who used the story of Blodeuedd as the basis for his novel The Owl Service.

Links to books by Rees herself:

   

   

Finally, here are some editions of The Mabinogion. I don't have a recommendation for the best edition although I myself have the Everyman Classics edition which has suited my needs just fine.

   

A book about Guest's edition