Swedish Painted Wall Hangings × Lubok Popular Print

Both put cheap-print stories into dense, bright, hand-coloured popular images.

From the research on Swedish Painted Wall Hangings (Dalmålning, Bonadsmålning and Kurbits)

Mix them and make something Swedish Painted Wall Hangings Lubok Popular Print

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Swedish Painted Wall Hangings, their arrangement from Swedish Painted Wall Hangings, the finish from Lubok Popular Print. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Swedish Painted Wall Hangings (Dalmålning, Bonadsmålning and Kurbits) Lubok Popular Print

Type from Lubok Popular Print: Hand-lettering
Tight setting
Colour from Swedish Painted Wall Hangings: Full polychrome
Flat fields
Form from Swedish Painted Wall Hangings: Stylised figuration
Floral & vegetal
Composition from Swedish Painted Wall Hangings: Framed panels
Horror vacui
Surface from Lubok Popular Print: Carved line
Misregistration & overprint

Swedish Painted Wall Hangings avoids carved line: this is where the two pull against each other.

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Lubok Popular Print

Fiesta

Londrina Solid; Lubok Popular Print used Hand-cut Cyrillic lettering in the block, from Church Slavonic-style semi-uncial (poluustav) to civil script and Rubber-stamped and stencilled lettering imitating lubok woodcut letters in Russian Futurist books

Text · Swedish Painted Wall Hangings

Rural Swedish wall hangings painting biblical scenes, figures in local costume, freehand in bright flat colour on cloth or paper. Two distinct schools are merged: Dalarna dalmålning, where swelling kurbits bouquets fill the gaps, and South Swedish bonad painting (Småland, Halland). Motifs came from German and French prints and figure bibles; no atlas style fits as parent. Flourishing c. 1750–1850, it survives as a revived Swedish design motif.

EB Garamond; Swedish Painted Wall Hangings used Painted hand-lettered captions and Painted hand-lettered dates

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Swedish Painted Wall Hangings, with a counter-accent from Lubok Popular Print. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Swedish Painted Wall Hangings (Dalmålning, Bonadsmålning and Kurbits) Lubok Popular Print

#f1e6cc ground · 36%
#2b2118 ink · 14%
#e0a82e accent · 18%
#b3261e accent · 14%
#2f5d8a accent · 10%
#3f7a3f accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f1e6cc;
  --ink: #2b2118;
  --accent-1: #e0a82e;
  --accent-2: #b3261e;
  --accent-3: #2f5d8a;
  --accent-4: #3f7a3f;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "EB Garamond", serif;
}

The two styles

1750–present · Northern Europe Swedish Painted Wall Hangings (Dalmålning, Bonadsmålning and Kurbits) Rural Swedish wall hangings painting biblical scenes, figures in local costume, freehand in bright flat colour on cloth or paper. Two distinct schools are merged: Dalarna dalmålning, where swelling kurbits bouquets fill the gaps, and South Swedish bonad painting (Småland, Halland). Motifs came from German and French prints and figure bibles; no atlas style fits as parent. Flourishing c. 1750–1850, it survives as a revived Swedish design motif.

An ornate folk-art cover titled “THE WOLF BRIDE” shows a large snarling black wolf behind a braided woman in floral traditional dress carrying a glowing lantern. Flowers and leafy borders surround small scenes with villages, castles, riders, hooded skeletons, a wizard, a black cat, birds, and a skeleton, beneath a sun and crescent moon.

1650–1920 · Eastern Europe Lubok Popular Print Cheap single-sheet Russian popular prints sold at fairs and by pedlars from the later 17th century: woodcut, later engraved and lithographed pictures of saints, fables, heroes, battles and satire in which text and image share one sheet. Thick-contoured, flattened figures fill the field, captions and rhymed verses crowd the gaps, episodes split into panels, and loud tempera washes brushed on by hand spill over the lines.

Swedish Painted Wall Hangings × Lubok Popular Print

What each style brings

The type

The colours

As CSS

The two styles

More combinations

With Swedish Painted Wall Hangings

With Lubok Popular Print