Style combination · Pairs well

Mir iskusstva Book Art × Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics

A parallel national revival of the same years: Bilibin framed Russian fairy tales in Old Russian borders as Munthe framed the sagas; combine for a northern storybook, but keep the Norse and Russian sources distinct.

From the research on Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)

Mix them and make something Mir iskusstva Book Art Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Mir iskusstva Book Art, their arrangement from Mir iskusstva Book Art, the finish from Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics. 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 Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)

Type from Mir iskusstva Book Art: Hand-lettering
Ornamented display
Colour from Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics: Flat fields
Earth & mineral
Form from Mir iskusstva Book Art: Stylised figuration
Borders & frames
Composition from Mir iskusstva Book Art: Framed panels
Central symmetry
Surface from Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics: Carved line
Flat

The type

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

Display · Mir iskusstva Book Art

Again

Federant; 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

Text · Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics

The flat, decorative branch of Norway's and Finland's national romanticism, which turned Viking carving, the sagas, the Kalevala and old peasant weaving into modern ornament. Gerhard Munthe set the woodcut-like pen style and blackletter type of the 1899 saga edition, had Draumkvæde (1904) hand-lettered after Norse saga manuscripts, and designed tapestries of stiff myth figures in flat folk colour; Akseli Gallen-Kallela gave the Kalevala bold outlines and flat colour in woodcuts, frescoes, ryijy rugs and book vignettes; Dragestil timber buildings carried dragon heads.

Space Mono; Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics used The hand-lettered text of Draumkvæde (1904) and The blackletter text type Munthe chose for Snorre Sturlason

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics, 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 Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)

#e8dcc2 ground · 36%
#2a1f17 ink · 14%
#c9932e accent · 18%
#a3342b accent · 14%
#2e4a7d accent · 10%
#56703f accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #e8dcc2;
  --ink: #2a1f17;
  --accent-1: #c9932e;
  --accent-2: #a3342b;
  --accent-3: #2e4a7d;
  --accent-4: #56703f;
  --font-display: "Federant", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Space Mono", monospace;
}

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.

Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism): In Norway the fascist Nasjonal Samling (1933–45) took a golden sun cross on red, which it claimed as St Olav's shield, for its emblem, leaned heavily on Viking art and symbolism and built on romantic nationalism, so keep saga warriors, dragon ships and the Olav cross away from ethnic-nationalist framing. Old signs near this material, the othala rune, the sun cross (also called Odin's cross) and Odin's valknut, are used by neo-Nazis and other white supremacists, though non-racist pagans also use the othala rune and the valknut: check how such a sign reads in context before borrowing it. Gallen-Kallela's 1918 insignia for the White Army's Order of the Cross of Liberty set a golden swastika into the cross: do not borrow it. Karelianism cast Karelia as a refuge of authentic Finnishness, and some of its ideas later fed the irredentist Greater Finland project, so do not present Karelian or Orthodox folk culture as merely Finland's past: Karelians are a living people with their own language and crafts. In these decades Norway's Norwegianisation policy pressed the Sámi to assimilate: do not fold Sámi duodji motifs into this Norse ornament.

The two styles

An ornate illustrated poster titled “SILVER LAKE” shows a long-haired woman in embroidered robes sitting beneath birch trees beside a lake, with two swans and a distant castle. A decorative border contains mirrored peacocks, squirrels, deer, flowers and curling foliage.

1898–1927 · Eastern Europe 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. 1880–1922 · Northern Europe Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism) The flat, decorative branch of Norway's and Finland's national romanticism, which turned Viking carving, the sagas, the Kalevala and old peasant weaving into modern ornament. Gerhard Munthe set the woodcut-like pen style and blackletter type of the 1899 saga edition, had Draumkvæde (1904) hand-lettered after Norse saga manuscripts, and designed tapestries of stiff myth figures in flat folk colour; Akseli Gallen-Kallela gave the Kalevala bold outlines and flat colour in woodcuts, frescoes, ryijy rugs and book vignettes; Dragestil timber buildings carried dragon heads.