Lust & Found

Global Latest

“Mr. Gustave Moreau is an extraordinary artist, unique.” wrote the French author Huysmans, “He is a mystic locked up in the middle of Paris in a cell into which even the noise of everyday life that nevertheless beats furiously at the doors of the cloister does not penetrate. Thrown in ecstasy, he sees resplendent fairy-like visions, the apotheoses of other times.”

Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), was an enigma. He was many other things, things...

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Art & Design

Colour plates from “Gems and precious stones of North America” (1890) & “History of the gems found in North Carolina” (1907) by George Frederick Kunz, (1856-1932).

“A popular description of their occurrence, value, history, archaeology, and of the...

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Nature

Sex, science & sumptuous flowers in Dr. Robert John Thornton’s 1807 epic, A New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus: The Temple of Flora.

With its exotic flora from foreign climes, their genitalia turned provocatively, suggestively...

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Art & Design Nature

Treacherous rapids and remote shamanic Siberian tribes. Photography from the Russian explorer I.G. Ivanov’s 1913 Land Management Expeditions into the remote Gornaia Shoria mountain region.

During 1913, an obscure Russian explorer named I.G. Ivanov (1826-1929) undertook two...

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Travel

Brigadier General & photographer. Found in a photo album; the insane aftermath carnage of World War One captured by a Canadian insurance man.

William Okell Holden Dodds (1867-1934) was a Canadian Brigadier General in the First...

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History

Almquist & Cöster’s squeaky clean, fluorescent vision of late 1950s Sweden.

The Swedish National Heritage Board holds in its archives a large collection...

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Travel

Magic Lantern journal. Art from the original Russian Revolution of 1905. The pages are yellowing and brittle but the revolutionary fervour in the art they carry is still as raw, fresh and angry as the day they were printed.

Before the Russian Revolution(s) of 1917 there was another; the First Russian...

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Art & Design History

Owl vs. Rabbit. Just one of many strange scenes from Eduard Hallberger’s bizarre, late 1800’s Illustrated World.

In the late 1800s, Eduard Hallberger (1822-1880), claimed to be bringing Germany...

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Art & Design

Part #1 : 1900. “Nonsense, carelessness and Kneipsinn”. The fantastic graphics of German satirical magazine, ULK. Minus the politics.

ULK, Illustriertes Wochenblatt für Humor und Satire, (Illustrated weekly paper for humour...

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Art & Design Obscurity

The elusive Alexander Rothaug (1870-1946), the Viennese painter who rendered myth a reality whilst leaving his own life opaque.

Who was Alexander Rothaug? Why isn’t he equally as famous as some...

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Art & Design

The state-of-the-art futurist design of the Finnish Suomen Yleisradio national radio station operation circa 1927-1956.

Yle is Finland’s national public broadcasting service. Suomen Yleisradio (Finland’s General Radio) was founded in...

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Art & Design History

Hubertus Salomon Hordijk, the former army captain known as “Steel Bart”, spent a decade in the 1900s as Amsterdam’s autocratic Chief of Police. All that time he was taking photos.

Not the most likely canditate for artistic photographer, Hubertus Salomon Hordijk (1862-1930)...

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Art & Design History

Helene Schjerfbeck began as a precociously skilled, slightly melancholic late-19th-century academic realist. She finished as a painter whose sublime abstract images are an exquisite harmony of pure paint and cryptic description.

“I have to draw to the point of madness, just draw. Just work, work and think of nothing else”, said the brilliant Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. It did him no good, he was just another “degenerate” artist to the Nazis.

From hat shop girl to Dutch art icon. But who was the Girl in the Kimono? The opaque story of an 1890s working class teenager immortalised by George Hendrik Breitner.

Descendant of samurai and relentless entrepreneur, Ogawa Kazumasa opened Tokyo’s first photo studio, shot Japan’s art treasures, the 100 prettiest geisha in Tokyo and taught photography to the military. His legacy is these exquisite images of flowers.

L’Estampe Moderne; the 1890s Parisian Art Nouveau “best of” album feat. various international artists. 4 lithographs every month. Just 3₣r 50c an issue.

It’s easy to see how, in the mid 1800s, Paul Gustave Doré “hypnotized the widest public ever captured by a major illustrator”. Even Van Gogh was a fan, he copied Doré shortly before shooting himself.

In the 1890s the Dutch painter, George Hendrik Breitner took nude reference photos for his paintings. In the 1990s they were found.

Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach. 1880s free love messiah, naturist, pacifist, vegetarian, sun worshipper and unique symbolist painter.

Found photos : Three lost decades of Iowa Speedway recovered. With Merlin Benning, Lester “Red” Dralle. Claus Stricker, Don & Dick Feckers & Red Droste. 1950>1970.

The Art of Protest: Albert Hahn was righteous anger manifest. A graphic character assassin that even the mighty Germany Kaiser feared.

It’s 1914. and Orientalism meets Art Nouveau and the early stirrings of Art Deco in Emile-Allain Séguy’s “Samarkande: 20 Compositions en couleurs dans le Style oriental”.

The 1920s French Art Deco influencer who drew pure design inspiration from the natural world. Insectes (1929) by Émile-Allain Séguy.

The forgotten Finska Vyer birch bark album, by I.K Inha, 1892. Inside are raw natural landscape photographs of Finland. It won the 1st international photographic competion in Paris.

William Morris. Strawberry Thief . “You can picture my Father going out in the early morning and watching the rascally thrushes at work on the fruit beds…”

The Swiss artist, Ernst Kreidolf (1863-1956). A Princess helped him give up the life of a farmer to put his faith and future in the hands of the flower fairies. He lived magically ever after.

Painter & early street photographer. The astonishing early street photography that helped George Hendrik Breitner add social realism to his famous paintings of Amsterdam.

India mid-1800s : Dr John Murray, cholera specialist an photographer. He spent 40 years travelling with gear weighing 400 pounds and a servant. His ever so slightly psychedelic negatives made it all worth it.

Samarkand, early 1900s. The first ever colour photographs of the ancient Persian city by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, an unknown Russian who invented his own colour photography process.

It’s 1914. and Orientalism meets Art Nouveau and the early stirrings of Art Deco in Emile-Allain Séguy’s “Samarkande: 20 Compositions en couleurs dans le Style oriental”.

Around the world with the rare travel drawings by the American painter, Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). Found in the archives of the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.

Colour plates from “Gems and precious stones of North America” (1890) & “History of the gems found in North Carolina” (1907) by George Frederick Kunz, (1856-1932).

Sex, science & sumptuous flowers in Dr. Robert John Thornton’s 1807 epic, A New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus: The Temple of Flora.

Treacherous rapids and remote shamanic Siberian tribes. Photography from the Russian explorer I.G. Ivanov’s 1913 Land Management Expeditions into the remote Gornaia Shoria mountain region.

Brigadier General & photographer. Found in a photo album; the insane aftermath carnage of World War One captured by a Canadian insurance man.

Almquist & Cöster’s squeaky clean, fluorescent vision of late 1950s Sweden.

Magic Lantern journal. Art from the original Russian Revolution of 1905. The pages are yellowing and brittle but the revolutionary fervour in the art they carry is still as raw, fresh and angry as the day they were printed.

Owl vs. Rabbit. Just one of many strange scenes from Eduard Hallberger’s bizarre, late 1800’s Illustrated World.

Part #1 : 1900. “Nonsense, carelessness and Kneipsinn”. The fantastic graphics of German satirical magazine, ULK. Minus the politics.

The elusive Alexander Rothaug (1870-1946), the Viennese painter who rendered myth a reality whilst leaving his own life opaque.

The state-of-the-art futurist design of the Finnish Suomen Yleisradio national radio station operation circa 1927-1956.

Hubertus Salomon Hordijk, the former army captain known as “Steel Bart”, spent a decade in the 1900s as Amsterdam’s autocratic Chief of Police. All that time he was taking photos.