Mir iskusstva Book Art × Narbut School

Share the lineage of line drawing and bookish framing; Narbut turns it toward heraldry and state identity.

From the research on Narbut School (Ukrainian Baroque Revival Graphics)

Mix them and make something Mir iskusstva Book Art Narbut School

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Mir iskusstva Book Art, their arrangement from Mir iskusstva Book Art, the finish from Mir iskusstva Book Art. 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.

Mir iskusstva Book Art Narbut School (Ukrainian Baroque Revival Graphics)

Type from Narbut School: Hand-lettering
Ornamented display
Colour from Narbut School: Limited spot colours
Monochrome
Form from Mir iskusstva Book Art: Stylised figuration
Borders & frames
Composition from Mir iskusstva Book Art: Framed panels
Central symmetry
Surface from Mir iskusstva Book Art: Flat

The type

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

Display · Narbut School

Memory

Federant; Narbut School used Narbut's hand-drawn Ukrainian Baroque lettering and initials and Hand-drawn Cossack-baroque title lettering on charters and banknotes

Text · Mir iskusstva Book Art

The graphic idiom of the St Petersburg World of Art circle (journal 1898–1904, exhibitions until Paris 1927) and the book artists around it. Ivan Bilibin's state-printed, lithographed fairy tales set firmly outlined, flat-washed pictures and text inside folk-ornament borders drawn from lubki, crafts and icons; Benois and Somov revived the eighteenth century of Versailles and old Petersburg in vignettes and rococo scenes. Both branches made the book one ensemble of cover, headpiece, initial, plate and tailpiece, in watercolour, gouache or black ink rather than oil.

Libre Caslon Text; Mir iskusstva Book Art used Ivan Bilibin's hand-drawn cover titles and illuminated initials in an Old Russian manner, drawn as part of the page and Typeset Cyrillic text in a single block inside an ornamental border, opened by an illuminated initial and closed by a tailpiece

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Narbut School, with a counter-accent from Mir iskusstva Book Art. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Mir iskusstva Book Art Narbut School (Ukrainian Baroque Revival Graphics)

#f1ead8 ground · 36%
#111111 ink · 14%
#c9a227 accent · 18%
#7a1f1a accent · 14%
#b8342a accent · 10%
#2f4a73 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f1ead8;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #c9a227;
  --accent-2: #7a1f1a;
  --accent-3: #b8342a;
  --accent-4: #2f4a73;
  --font-display: "Federant", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Libre Caslon Text", serif;
}

Use it with care

Mir iskusstva Book Art: This 'Russian' folk look is a refined, partly state-commissioned idiom of the imperial capital, assembled by professional artists from northern peasant crafts, lubki and icons: do not present it as timeless ethnic Russian folk art or as a neutral emblem of the Russian state, and keep icon-derived holy figures out of trivial uses. Its makers were not all Russian: Heorhiy Narbut, for example, became rector of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and designed the Ukrainian People's Republic's banknotes and stamps, so credit artists by their own identities. Benois (d. 1960) and Dobuzhinsky (d. 1957) remain in copyright in the EU and Russia (life plus 70 years, so at least until 2031 and 2028), while Bilibin (d. 1942), Somov (d. 1939) and Narbut (d. 1920) are in the public domain there: draw new borders, figures and lettering rather than reproducing their pages. Somov's Le Livre de la Marquise is explicitly erotic, above all the 1918 edition, so keep its plates out of children's or general-audience pastiche.