It came to me last night that the crescent moon is featured in a couple of my favorite illustrations by Ivan Bilibin (1876 to 1942). Bilibin is best known for his illustrations of Russian folk tales: The Tale of Tsaravich Ivan, the Firebird and the Grey Wolf; Vassilisa the Beautiful; Vassily the Unlucky; The Tale of Tsar Saltan. Many of the illustrations are bordered with simple graphic motifs that recall the Russian folk genre to which they belong.

Bilibin was also a noted stage designer whose portfolio included stage designs for the 1909 premiere production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel.

However noteworthy are his larger works, I'm attracted to some of his smaller illustrations featuring stark Russian landscapes that serve as endpieces or the back cover of books. Their simplicity is reminiscent of Japanese woodblock prints.

from his work as a illustrator, Bilibin painted scenes from his travels to Egypt and the Middle East. The paintings have a graphic quality often playing light against shadow in stark contrast to his illustrations of the northern Russian crescent moon.

View a Bilibin sampler.

Okay, stop groaning. This is Photoshopped. But I didn't have my camera last evening when I went out to the bench in the north field to watch the sunset. The sunset action was at the northwest horizon, but this was happening to the southwest over Mount Hood. I burned every detail in my memory long enough to get back to civilization. This is as faithful a rendition as I can recall.

The alignment of the crescent moon, a small horizontal lenticular cloud and the peak of the mountain was probably auspicious, but just how so was not readily apparent to me. The magic was in the orange glow cast by the setting sun that slightly illuminated the underside of the cloud and the snow on the west flank of Mount Hood.

Maybe it is similar to this remarkable photograph of the sun and moon in alignment over the north pole:

I've had these images in my head for years and just now have gotten the time to develop them enough to be able to add them to my portfolio of digital illustration. Some are more "finished" than others and a couple still qualify as "sketches"— I keep revising them.

Victor. 2008. Digital illustration. © 2008, Cynthia M. Henchell. All rights reserved.

What is the madness behind the unusual theme? I wanted to capture some of the feeling of San Francisco and the community of Locke in the Sacramento River delta from a time when Chinese immigrants were still trying to adapt to their new surroundings. Relationships with the outside world were complicated and at the same time, this society was itself torn between the new world and the old world. There are more to come but I decided to let these first few out.

In general, I'm not in love with the Polaroid transfer look since it's such a cliché, but I tried it with Victor and kept it for the cyanotone contrast to the montaged hand-tinted sepiatones.Â

The (giclée) printed sizes are small (about 5" to 7" wide) and meant to be a series of miniatures, not too different than Smith portraits or snapshots from the period. I have them in oversized mattes. View others in the series.

The next series of vector reproductions is from Eugene Grasset's Plants and Their Application to Ornament A Nineteenth-Century Design Primer which was published in 1897. Somewhat earlier than Christopher Dresser, Grasset was more of a contemporary of William Morris, Eugene Grasset was more famous in his time as a designer of French-style posters and magazine cover designs.

Plants and Their Application to Ornamentbegins with a study of one of the garden plants from which stylized design variations are generated. His designs are generally Art Nouveau or Art and Crafts style and quite archetypical of the period. Some are representational of how these designs would be applied as decoration to different media (wallpaper, fabric, tiles, stained glass, carved wood, metal,porcelain) or as decorative patterns, borders, and motifs. They betray his background as a decorative materials designer before turning to illustration.

All of the original plates were reproduced by a pochoir (literally 'stencil') print process, which was a precursor of silk screen printing. The originals are very graphic and lend themselves to vector illustration. As such, they can be used in period reproduction or adapted for contemporary design elements.

Below is the first in an ambitious series. The collection will eventually grow to include design variations for 33 garden plants. View completed plates here.

Let me tell you about a special place: Maryhill Museum of Art. This is not your typical art museum set in the middle of a metropolitan area but it houses a world-class, if not just a bit eclectic collection. The museum and grounds are very unexpected, rising out of the semi-arid wheatfields and basalt cliffs on the banks of the Columbia River in southern Washington, they seem to be an oasis. Apart from a couple of wineries, there is not much for 20 miles in either direction.

The museum is housed in a large concrete, French chateau-style building that was to be the home of Samuel Hill—legendary road builder, entrepreneur, Quaker, pacifist—who befriended a group of very remarkable women who helped him turn his imposing building into an art museum. From "the prince of castle-nowhere" he became a benefactor and discerning art collector.

First among his friends, there was modern dancer Loîe Fuller, whose French connections and friendship with Auguste Rodin provided the seed for the collection. Though her encouragement, Rodin offered several works, studies, and watercolors to the little museum in the desert.Â

Through pre-WWI connections, Sam was introduced to and later befriended Marie, Queen of Romania (whose paternal grandmother was Queen Victoria and maternal grandfather was Tzar Alexander II). She brought her considerable notoriety and her Byzantine styled furniture, royal artifacts, and mementoes to be a permanent part of the museum. It was Queen Marie who dedicated the museum at it's opening in 1926.

The troika of Sam's friends and museum founders was complete with San Francisco sugar heiress Alma deBreckville Spreckels. Alma was a friend of Loïe Fuller and leveraged her influence and wealth to bring several European and American masterpieces into the collection, though her legacy was acquisition of the Théâtre de la Mode, a set of French haute couture mannequins and tableaux created in post WWII Paris. Alma continued her interest and contribution to the museum long after Sam Hill's death.

(l–r: Loïe Fuller, Queen Marie of Romania, Alma deBreckville Spreckels)

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Well, the history of the museum is all well and good, but "is it art?" Though the collection also weaves from native art and artifacts, through international chess sets, to contemporary painting and sculpture, I must admit that there are some very surprising and unique pieces that make up a remarkable collection.

Unfortunately, my favorite exhibition is on loan for several more years: the American painter R. H. Ives Gammel's magnum opus, a series of allegorical paintings based on Francis Thompson's poem "The Hound of Heaven." This series of 23 panels and a large body of Gammel's other work are in the museum's permanent collection. Gammel was a 20th century classical realist though The Hound is filled with mythological surrealism and symbolism. Each panel is technically well executed, strongly graphic yet aesthetically pleasing if one is not entirely swept up into the cosmological mysticism of the piece. Another favorite is The Dream of the Shulamite.Â

Now for the shameless self-promotion: I am the designer and custodian of the website for Maryhill Museum of Art. Since being drawn into the lush cool gardens (where peacocks rule) on a hot summer day shortly after moving to the area, I have since become a supporter. I am very pleased to be associated with such an eclectic little place.Â

Linda Brady Tesner's book: Maryhill Museum of Art is a well-written and beautifully illustrated overview of the museum's history and it's collection but it can't beat a visit to the real thing.

Though later than William Morris, Christopher Dresser pre-dated the Arts and Crafts movement (see comment, below) in England and was influential in the development of the industrial arts, his designs having been featured in the Crystal Palace Exhibition. His studies in the decorative arts were immensely popular in the period but are only recently coming back into favor with the resurgence of interest in the Arts and Crafts period.

His background in botany is evident in many of his design motifs and that especially appeals to me (as a recovering botanist). Today we would categorize the body of his work variously as Arts and Crafts (though possibly not, as per comment), Art Deco, Japonaise or Aesthetic. He was a product of the Victorian design era but much too "renaissance" to be confined to the period, or to the culture of western Europe/North America. He studied the design traditions of Asia and the Middle East, influencing some of his own design.

I have started a vector reproduction of Studies in Design with the intention of getting inside of Christopher Dresser's head a bit. View completed plates here. These are "hand traced" in Adobe Illustrator and are faithful to the original design though repeating pattern designs have been more accurately registered to permit seamless repeat. There are 134 individual motifs. Dresser rendered most in color, and those colors have been used in the vector drawings, however there are several that Dresser only drew as outlines. I am anxious to try different color combinations.