All Aboard! Images from the Golden Age of Rail Travel [Review]


All Aboard! Images from the Golden Age of Rail Travel

by Lynn Johnson & Michael O’Leary
Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1999

If you were a graphic artist in the 1980s and 1990s Chronicle Books of San Francisco was your crack, publishing tons of art, art history, design and architecture books every. All were beautifully designed and printed using the latest computerized technology of its time, and as a designer myself, I drooled over their catalogs. (No online shopping back then.) Though not hardcover the books were made to last and be referred to again and again. The paper was heavy and slick, perfect for detailed art and true color. Of course I owned a bunch of them and still do.

But times change, and gradually the internet became the tool of choice for art research and creation. There wasn’t a need for artists to keep libraries of reference material anymore. But I kept much of mine. For both sentimental reasons and just because these books are such a sensual delight. I even like the spicy smell and feel of that heavy, thick, almost plasticized paper.

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 7/3/24: Narniaworld, Part 1 (Narnia LIV)

What if The Chronicles of Narnia inspired a theme park similar to Disneyworld in Florida?

Of course, it’s not likely to happen anytime soon. Or ever perhaps. But think of the possibilities. That’s the theme I’m going to riff on for this July’s Worldbuilding Wednesday posts. What rides, events, eating places, and attractions would it have?

Let’s start with the food.

Luckily Lewis wrote at length about the foods his characters ate so there’s no shortage of inspiration. The basic menu would be English fare, with side forays into Middle Eastern cuisine (Calormen) Greek (Bacchus and the Maenads) Seafood (Voyage of the Dawn Treader) and high-end gourmet (Ramandu’s Feast.)

The following restaurants were randomly generated by me with some help from ChatGPT. But mostly me.

 

Places to eat in Narniaworld

Bacchus’s Wild Romp  A rustic, lively tavern serving both English and Mediterranean-inspired pub fare with plenty of wine, beer, and ale. There is a dance floor with music nightly. Specialties include gyros and moussaka, Shepherd’s pie, Irish stew, Greek salad, and roast meats.

NOTE: I picture Narniaworld being more of a European park in that alcoholic beverages are available in some restaurants inside, along the lines of Parc Asterix or the Bavarian Oktoberfest in Munich. Not all restaurants; just this one, and Ramandu’s Island which is detailed below.
Bulgy Bears’ Sausage Station A cart selling hotdogs including kielbasa, chorizo, bratwurst, vienna, braunschweiger, vegan and andouillie sausages that travels throughout the park where needed to feed guests.
Dancing Lawn Picnic Grounds A wooded area with picnic tables for guests who want to bring their own food. It’s next to Beruna Campground and after dusk, the area is closed so Narnian character actors can entertain overnight campers with bonfires, stories, swordfight displays, and music.
The Great Souk of Tashbaan
 Due to open next year, this open-air marketplace will feature a variety of food stalls selling Middle Eastern foods such as shish kebab, flatbreads and hummus, baklava, shawarma, and, of course, Turkish Delight.
Miss Prizzle’s Cereal Bar Open in the mornings over by the campgrounds at Beruna. A food truck specializing in cold and hot cereals served with fresh fruit and the milk or plant milk of your choice. Try River God’s Granola or Caspian’s Raisin and Cinnamon Oatmeal.
Pavender Pancake House
 All kinds of pancakes served 7 am – 8 pm every day, plus English breakfast food items like kippers on toast, Scottish oatmeal, Irish soda bread, roasted tomatoes and mushrooms, and organic hams, sausages and bacons.
Queen Susan’s Butterhorns A cart that moves throughout the park selling freshly made Narniaworld butterhorns with different fillings and other kinds of pastries. (The butterhorns are also available in all the restaurants.)
Ramandu’s Island The most upscale sit-down restaurant in the park, inspired by the décor and menu of the nightly feast on the island of Ramandu and his daughter. Outdoor dining with long banquet tables on a private terrace can be reserved for weddings and other special events. This restaurant is located on an artificial island overlooking the bay a short distance from Cair Paravel.
Tea with Mr. Tumnus A themed restaurant set in a facsimile of Mr. Tumnus’s cave with rustic wooden tables, shelves full of books and knickknacks, and a cheerful crackling fireplace. Afternoon tea is served from 1 – 5 pm** and features finger sandwiches, quiches and omelets, toasted breads and over 100 different varieties of teas and coffees to choose from. For dessert try pound cake, syllabub, honeyed scones, and freshly made gelato in seasonal flavors. Character meals with Tumnus and Lucy are given on weekends. Regular lunch and pastries are available from 11am – 3pm. By far the most popular of Narniaworld’s restaurants so reservations are suggested.

** Yes I know a proper afternoon tea starts at 4 but this is a commercial endeavor.
The Wild Sea Serpent Shanty  A snack bar with lunch items by the water park, shaped like the dangerous yet goofy creature of the book. Features freshly made tropical fruit smoothies, grilled fish and shrimp wraps, and sweet potato and plantain fries.

Not the best design for a sea serpent-shaped snack bar, but good enough. The beast’s scales look appropriately fiberglassy.

I am sure there would be more than what’s listed here. Note that I left out The White Witch’s Frozen Delights. This would have been far too obvious.

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Narnian Triptych

Three highly stylized scenes from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, done in a style that, to my mind, imitates the Ballets Russes sketches of designer Leon Bakst.  (I’ll be going more into the Russian influence on depictions of Narnia later in the Summer.)

The first seems to show Lucy in the woods with the lamppost, even though there’s just a lantern and no post (but plenty of grapevines); the second,  the White Witch  commanding Mr. Tumnus; the third, a humanoid Aslan tied up on the Stone Table in a woe-is-me-pose. He’s only tied at the ankles so he could escape if he wanted to, but he doesn’t.

The Silver Chair, Macmillan HC 1988

One of the things I love about these Summers of Narnia is that I’m always discovering something new.

Take this illustration on the cover of the 1988 Macmillan hardback edition of The Silver Chair, depicting the climactic moment when the Green Witch snakeifies herself and wraps around Prince Rilian. There’s a distinct aesthetic about it that’s of its time, static and folklorish, slightly Slavic perhaps; Mary Engelbrite was doing a variation of the same thing, and Leo and Diane Dillon before her.  It’s dated compared to modern depictions, but still interesting for the artist having his or her own vision.

Rilian, for example, seems closer to Eustace’s age than the nearly 30-year-old man he is in the book while the serpent is comparatively tiny and doesn’t feel like much of a threat despite Eustace’s and Puddleglum’s consternation. (Where’s Jill?) The reptile does have some interesting fins and flanges though, that hints at it being more than the usual python or adder. Note Puddleglum’s webbed hands. (!)

I do wonder what Rilian is supposed to be wearing, though. It looks like an oversized sweatshirt with a white hood and borders covered with Russian folk designs. At the back of his left elbow is an outpuff of fabric that looks almost detached, like some kind of bustle, or one of those sleeves with a slit in it so the forearm can emerge at the elbow while the rest of empty sleeve hangs free.

I think the font is all wrong for the text though. It should be something more pagan and grander. What we have is too much like a wedding invitation.

The White Witch Returns, Part 3

So many White Witches! So little time!

First, this unusual fashion shoot model who has metal mesh pasted over her eyebrows and glass bulbs for hair. And string. And rock crystals.

Another fashion shoot witch in the Tilda Swinton mold.

This model was from a web site referencing “Candy Goth” style. But she’s got the wand, the white gown, the crown, the cruel, imperial demeanor… who else could she be but Jadis?

A classic British pantomime Winter Queen that could serve as the White Witch. Stylistically they’re similar, but the panto babes are usually friendlier, with more elaborate costumes.

Now let’s move on to some illustrations.

Snow Queen, by Thu Vien

Not labeled as the White Witch, but this slinky gal could be, if you assume the white hound is an Arctic wolf. She’s got the crown and staff/wand.

The witch says here “Bring me the son of Adam.”

From a cover illustration for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (Ignore the saccharine Lucy with her Cindy Brady hair.) The witch is wearing furs and an unusual Jack-of-Diamonds crown with a white fur trim. She seems to be giving a side-eye to the owl who is displaying a book showing, presumably, the prophecy of the four thrones. The pic is not dated, but if made after 2000 I’m sure the owl was thrown in because of its popularity in the Harry Potter franchise. There were no Narnian owls mentioned in LWW.

The Snow Queen, from a quick release DVD animated movie. Not the best character design — she looks like He-Man’s enemy Evil-Lynn — but she could serve well as the witch given her narrowed eyes and frown.

I was experimenting in Midjourney and came up with this pic of the White Witch in a double horned hennin (what Maleficient in the Disney movies wears.) The AI did it on its own.

Edmond gets the point of all this. Do you?

Worldbuilding Wednesday 6/26/24: Narnian Stars and Constellations (Narnia LIII)

The three constellations of Narnia mentioned by name: the Ship, the Hammer, and the Leopard. The artist modeled the Ship after Pauline Baynes’ drawing of The Dawn Treader while the Hammer is something a blacksmith would use.

In Prince Caspian, C. S. Lewis decided to explore the astronomical lore of the Narnian world. He created two planets, Tarva and Alambil, whose conjunction Caspian and Dr. Cornelius witness from a castle tower, and three constellations which Lucy mentions later — the Ship, Hammer, and Leopard. Alchemy and magic are also mentioned. The impression they give is that Narnia has become a run-of-the-mill, vaguely Tudor world rather than the magical land it once was (aside from those pesky educational inspectors, of course.) Which is fine if the books had remained a two-off, but this model is never brought up again.

As the series goes on a North Star is mentioned, the Spear-Head, which implies there’s also a constellation called the Spear. And I swore there was also a constellation called The Wheel (a ship’s wheel) but that turns out to be my childhood memories being fuzzy. At any rate, the starlore adds to the world’s depth. Writer and Mythopoeic scholar Ruth Berman goes into depth about Narnia’s starlore here.

What other stars, planets, and constellations might there be?

 

Narnian Stars and Constellations

Stars and Planets

Emernash

Falgus

Hilthim

Nemales

Pellior

The Prophet’s Star

Proserpta

The Star of Sacrifice

Vespoma

Zulmar

 Constellations

The Ash Tree

The Autumn Cross

The Kneeling Shipwright

The Leaping Whale

The Lily

The Lioness

The Milk Jug

The Nightingale

The Royal Hearth

The Summer Diamond

The Bees and the Beekeeper

… the spells began straight away, and at first there was nothing very important in them. They were cures for warts (by washing your hands in moonlight in a silver basin) and toothache and cramp, and a spell for taking a swarm of bees. The picture of the man with toothache was so lifelike that it would have set your own teeth aching if you looked at it too long, and the golden bees which were dotted all round the fourth spell looked for a moment as if they were really flying.

As a child I always wondered about this passage from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Why would a spell for capturing a swarm of bees be in Coriakin’s magic book?

The answer is, because Coriakin was a rural English sort of wizard, and such a spell was well established in rural English Medieval village life.

Before the sugarcane industry took off in the 16th century, honey was the only source of sugar in Europe.  As such it was a precious substance and its husbandry vitally important. Most farms, monasteries, nunneries, cottageholders, and the like had hives, and in an age before printed materials, the knowledge to manage them was passed down orally, often in the form of spells and charms. There’s a whole article about it here on Atlas Obscura, one of my favorite websites.  I won’t repeat it, but only say such spells to control the insects were very real. They could spell the difference between prosperity and failure for the honey farmers.

Now let’s talk about the pictures. The first one, from a Medieval manuscript, depicts a beekeeper swaddled in cloth banging a drum to get the swarming bees to settle down, in the hopes they’ll move into a new skep (those woven, cone-shaped containers) and start a fresh colony. The second pic may be a honey thief running away from some angry bees, or performing a ritual to lead them to a fresh hive.

Going back to Coriakin’s magic book, if you’d like to know what else was in it, I speculate here.

Dryad at the Feast of Bacchus

AI art created in SDXL

I took inspiration from this Worldbuilding Wednesday Narnia post, specifying a 1920s children’s book illustration model. She’s sampling different rocks, sands, and minerals from her plate.