E. A. Seguy was one of the foremost French designers of decorative art during the first third of the twentieth century. He produced numerous color portfolios of visual ideas for artists, illustrators and designers over a long and distinguished career. This book reproduces in full color all 40 of the extraordinary plates from Papillons (Butterflies) and Insectes, two portfolios Seguy published in the 1920s. Included here are 81 specimens of butterflies plus 16 artistic designs based on butterfly motifs, and 80 insects other than butterflies with 16 decorative compositions utilizing insects. These extremely striking creatures with their provocative color combinations come from all parts of the world-India, China, Australia, New Guinea, Malaysia, Java, Borneo, Thailand, Sikkim, Malacca, Madagascar, Mozambique, the Cameroons, the Congo, Senegal, Algeria, the East Indies, Europe, Armenia, Mexico, Péru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil. Among the fascinating insects depicted here are various kinds of cicada, grasshoppers, beetles, bees, hornets, flies (including dragonflies), weevils, gnats, bugs. Seguy drew these butterflies and insects, gathered from scientific publications over a period of years, with scrupulous accuracy of form and color. The intensity and freshness of the color of the living creatures were retained by the use of the pochoir method: hand-coloring through a large number of different stencils of each plate. The artist provided the scientific name and habitat for each species, reprinted here without alteration in a separate section. Seguy's aim was to make available to decorative artists dozens of examples of extremely colorful exotic creatures that had been unjustly neglected because of their rarity in life and in illustrations. These beautiful and unusual forms of nature, and Seguy's designs based upon them, are an unparalleled source of new ideas for textiles, wallpapers, packaging, mosaics, stained glass, rugs, and many other areas of graphics and crafts work.
來源: Google Book