23 Mar Art Nouveau Posters

BexSimon and Art Nouveau posters

Where did my love for Art Nouveau posters begin?

We popped in to see Lucy Quinnell at the Fire and Iron gallery the other day and ended up exchanging ghost stories and this got me thinking about the Art Nouveau posters I grew up with.

Lucy recounted how a little girl who was at her house some time ago, was sat quietly watching something, as if there was something moving across the room.  When Lucy asked her what she was looking at, she replied ‘I was watching the man cross the room’.

Lucy definitely has a few ghost stories to tell. The beautiful house she lives in, on the site of the gallery, was built 666 years ago this year!!!!

When I was little, my older sister and I shared a room, and so did my brothers. At night, I used to sit at the top of the stairs, waiting for her to come up to bed because I didn’t like being on my own.  But I used to watch in terror as foot prints would appear and disappear in the carpet.  I would watch the carpet pile ruffle up into the shape of one foot print and then ruffle flat, then the next one would appear in exactly the same way and so on, as if an invisible man was walking along our landing towards me.

I would sit, terrified, watching them, every night desperate for my sister to come to bed.  The one thing that I would do to try and move my mind into a happy place was stare into the pictures that lined the walls of the stairs.  My folks had about 4 or 5 Toulouse Lautrec Art Nouveau posters.  I never knew what they were about, or who they were by, but in them I would escape.

There was one Art Nouveau poster in particular, Divan Japonais, which I really love (click on image at the top of the page to open).  Now, if it wasn’t for the ghost foot print thing that was going on in the carpet next to me, I probably would have found some aspects of this poster scary, but that wasn’t an option. I needed a fantasy to take me away and it was the body-less arms that conducted the atmosphere and made music play in my ears.  The empty glass had quenched my throat, the Cruella Deville like lady was my friend and so was the bearded gentle man with his crooked Cane.  I would dance on the stage with the girl in the Jane Avril poster, with our lace up boots and huge frilly skirts, to the adoring whistles and shouts from the audience.  From that stage I would look down into the darkness and see the instruments and hands of the orchestra moving perfectly in time with music, which pumped out into the smoke filled room.  Little did I know these posters were Toulouse Lautrec’s interpretation of the night life in the bars of Paris.

So is this where my love for Art Nouveau began?  I never really thought about it until recently.  I feel comforted by these Art Nouveau posters, as if I am home, slipping into the magic and dreaming.

It was Alphonse Mucha’s particular way of illustrating these Art Nouveau posters and paintings that soon caught on and were initially termed  the Mucha style, but this soon changed to the French words for ‘new art’ which is what we know as Art Nouveau.  He would draw beautiful women, draped in flowing clothes with halos on their heads, surrounded by flowers.

The Art Nouveau movement was also full of symbolic matter, which I love and try to identify what each symbol represents.

It’s these Art Nouveau posters that have inspired me to recreate my own female Blacksmith poster to help tell our brand story, taking into account all of these qualities.

In my drawing I have made the female very feminine, with the shadow under the breast and slim arms, she has long flowing hair and on her head instead of (health and safety) ear defenders, she has a crown with flowers covering her ears.  As she draws her arm back, about to strike her metal, the Union Jack is flowing from around her neck, falling behind her raised arm, almost as if it were an angel’s wing.  She has a tattoo of a Serpent and there is also one above her head, these both represent the good and evil….the opposites.  In the top left corner are a group of hammered leaves (anthuriums), my BexSimon signature hand made pieces.

Guarding her, curled at the ground is a Lion with its main riding up and leaping into flames.  My star sign is Leo, a Lion and this is also a fire sign.  The Lion also represents the hearth which she is using to heat up her iron.

Her pink anvil is place on a tree stump with creeping leaves climbing up.  Art Nouveau is all about nature and these creepers (another piece of BexSimon art work) are in the shape of hearts; this is forrepresents our strap line; Forged with Love.

The swirling trail of stars, show that her idea’s and designs come to her in the night and this is what she must forge, using her hammer and iron.

Written down the side is  ‘From the Blacksmith’s Tea Room Creation Began’   because this is also where BexSimon Collections began!  Over a cup of tea and a chocolate hobnob at the back of the forge, I would dream of creating a range of products that would go to retail and I would dream about all the things I would design and make and how the business would grow and I would be able to one day own my own Workshop/forge.

Art Noveau posters are a wonderful way of telling a story.