Mushrooms

Atlas of mushrooms, I have a hard time finding good translation for that, I hope atlas  is right. This one is from 1831-1846, it is big, 38 x 48 cm and has 76 plates. I do not have it, these pictures were taken in a library and published in another book. So, imagine it big, otherwise you do not get the image. It is a piece of art. I am more of a mushroom admirer than a hunter. However, I have to admit, there is something about going to forest and wander around and finding and picking them.  

The title is VIncenc Julius Krombholz, Naturgetreue Abbildungen und Beschreibungen der essbaren und vedaechtigen Schwaemme, Praga, 1831 - 1846. 

And thank you for showing empathy on my last post, the kid is jumping and running again, oh my god. 

Mushroom Hunting

I recognize only boleti, it is the only mushroom I can pick. Well, maybe two or three other kinds but I don't see them often. I actually don't see many mushrooms at all, I mean those edible ones that every one knows and goes hunting for. My aunt used to be a specialist in mushroom picking. But my uncle didn't believe her knowledge and used to go hunting for his own mushrooms. In their house, they had two jars of dried mushrooms, one belonged to him, the other one to my aunt.

Three Fairies

There was a theatre play for children in Prague called something like Big Adventure of two Gnomes. Their journey through a forest has been paved with mushrooms of all kinds, the stage designer really liked making them. So, they inspired me to work out her mushrooms even further. The cap is made of foam rubber and leather, the leg from wood. Cutting in foam rubber is fun but it took me a while to figure out a good shape and improve the technique. The material also needed to age so that it would become natural yellow.

These mushrooms served me well this Christmas as palm trees in our Nativity scene.

Find them on Etsy.

Collection 2010

Very limited one.
Pattern on the bag: it is all krtek's (little moule's) fault and instant watching it on youtube, although unwanted. But there are some really nice backgrounds painted and at one point a factory appears, all colorful and decorative. So this is where the wheel and sort of cubes come from.
Birds: Everybody likes them.
It is all on Etsy.

Mushrooms are part of the collection but wait till tomorrow, I will have better pictures.

Happy Frogs!

White snowy pictures everywhere, so I am coming straight with Christmas ones.

This is a so called matrix for linocut prints. I ll be sending it out as Christmas cards. Happy joint project of my husband who drew it and me who cut it. For some reason frog and mushroom together represent happiness and luck and they appear on Christmas cards. On the old ones though. As they were so popular their beauty vanished and they became kitchy. And I think it is their time again, to come back. I don't have pictures of the cards but I have few nice illustrations from 19th century books, some of them by Richard Ricky Doyle. Mushrooms, fairies, pucks, trolls etc.
But they cannot compete with my husband's one!

And it is also time for gnomes. They bring luck. Did you know that? Especially when you carry them around in your pocket. This one was found on a flea market, he called my name, so I went and got it.

The smaller guy is a ground frost and he doesn't have a magic power, he is just in a fairy tale in a book from when I was a kid. It is a Christmas time so we pulled it out and read it before bedtime.
I wish you happy and relaxed Christmas preparations.

Secret photos

I took these pictures on a brief visit to a workroom of a puppet theater. There was so much to look at, the creativity was springing from everywhere I turned. Apart from that, it felt like: finally I got there where I wished I could at least peep in as a child. And now it is too late. If only I could have taken the pictures with the kid's eyes, they would have been more interesting to look at.

If you wonder, what is in the second picture, it is mushrooms.

Mushroom Entry

I like this dress, there is lot of giant mushrooms on it. They have started to appear quite often on clothes, I guess that Japanese design has something to do with it, as far as I am able to say from searching the internet. Maybe I am wrong, does anybody know?



Mushrooms in general are nice subject for design, there are few around my house: a T-shirt (above, 2007), a scarf (follows, 1950s), baby overalls (1980s) and a cup (pre-war), the latter from the time when it started to be a highest scream of kitsch - toadstool and a dwarf or a child like on the cup presented here. It is interesting to trace it back, where this image comes from, apparently from Victorian British painting of fairies and pucks where mushrooms started to appear randomly every now and then. The style of paintings became popular in magazine illustrations in subsequent era and that is how it all started. At least that is how it seems to me after I did some research on it. There were also Bavarian fairy-tales involved in this evolution, they liked red mushrooms with white spots there a lot. And, of course, a mushroom and a frog themselves are much older, mythological, still, the 19th century illustrations gave the image its appearance.


Anyway, the fact that Czechs are tempted mushroom hunters doesn't have any mystical reason, it is a pure education of public through good mushroom guide books published here in larger amount since the beginning of the 20th century. That way people stopped being scared of poisonous kinds and also started to pick other species than just boleti. These two illustrations go with a folk poem from the pre-war time, so are the illustrations, general stuff from my little son's books.


These pictures come from an exhibition in a little school somewhere out in mountains where I come from. I liked how they had it done artistically, not just like a scientific mushroom guide book but also the way that mushrooms could be an inspiration. And they did not mean the psychedelic ones, of course, they just felt there is something creative in them.

Now the giant mushrooms are especially appealing to me right now, they are painted a lot but I haven't been able to find any reference to it in some kind of a written source. If I ever do, I'll let you know. This painting is by Barbora Motlová.