Style combination · Contrasts
Mir iskusstva Book Art × Vienna Secession
Both enclose pictures in symmetrical frames, but Vienna squared the frame into grids and bars while the Russian book filled a wide border with folk and rococo motifs; pick geometric order or narrative ornament.
Mix them and make something Mir iskusstva Book Art Vienna Secession
01
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 Vienna Secession
- Type from Vienna Secession
- Colour from Mir iskusstva Book Art
- Form from Mir iskusstva Book Art
- Composition from Vienna Secession
- Surface from Mir iskusstva Book Art
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Vienna Secession
Luxe
Federant; Vienna Secession used Alfred Roller's elongated, interlocking block capitals and Koloman Moser's geometric display lettering
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
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Mir iskusstva Book Art, with a counter-accent from Vienna Secession. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Mir iskusstva Book Art Vienna Secession
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#efe6cfground · 36% -
#1b1a17ink · 14% -
#c99a3aaccent · 18% -
#b8342aaccent · 14% -
#3d5a85accent · 10% -
#3e6b4faccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #efe6cf;
--ink: #1b1a17;
--accent-1: #c99a3a;
--accent-2: #b8342a;
--accent-3: #3d5a85;
--accent-4: #3e6b4f;
--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.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Mir iskusstva Book Art
- Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book Contrasts · Lebedev's Leningrad books dropped the frame, the ornament and the fairy-tale past, floating a few flat planes on bare paper; set them side by side to decide between a bordered, retrospective page and an open, modern one.
- Bezalel School Pairs well · In the same years both used Art Nouveau's ornamental frame to build a national book art from older ornament; set Bilibin's folk borders beside Raban's filigree frames to compare two revivals, or combine their framed, lettered pages.
- Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Pairs well · Both draw an even black contour and fill it with flat colour; give a clear-line page Bilibin's ornamental border and headpiece for a storybook with a heritage frame.
- Russian Futurist Book Contrasts · Both drew on the lubok, but the Futurists kept its crude cut, rough paper and handwriting while the World of Art refined it into a polished, bordered ensemble; choose between raw and ennobled folk sources.
- Celtic Revival Illumination & Lettering Pairs well · A parallel national revival of the same decades: both turned medieval and folk ornament into the borders and initials of a modern book; combine for a heritage storybook framed in old ornament.
- Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering) Pairs well · Bilibin's circle drew titles and initials in an Old Russian manner into bordered fairy-tale books; put a newly drawn vyaz title under a folk-ornament headpiece for a Russian Revival page rather than copying a liturgical heading.
- Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism) Pairs well · 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.
- Armenian Manuscript Illumination Pairs well · Bilibin's circle turned medieval ornament into the borders and initials of a modern book; follow that route to use canon-table arcades as a frame for new text rather than copying a sacred page.
With Vienna Secession
- Art Nouveau Contrasts · Set French whiplash against the Viennese square to show the turn from organic to geometric ornament within one decorative idiom.
- Art Deco Pairs well · Carry the Secession's squares, chequers and gold into Deco's stepped geometry for a luxurious but disciplined look.
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Pairs well · Both reduce motifs to emblematic flat shapes in a calm field; combine them for elegant cultural posters.
- Glasgow Style Pairs well · Vienna learned from Glasgow in 1900; combine Mackintosh's attenuated verticals with Secession squares and gold for refined cultural branding.
- Josef Frank and Svenskt Tenn Botanical Prints Contrasts · Frank came out of Vienna, but his loose, asymmetric plant repeats are the opposite of the Secession's geometric, symmetrical ornament; compare a Wiener Werkstätte grid pattern with his free-growing trees.
- Nieuwe Kunst (Dutch Art Nouveau) Pairs well · Both pulled Art Nouveau toward geometry, symmetry and strict repetition in the same years; add Vienna's black, white and gold and its white margins to the Dutch earth-colour repeat for a more open page.
- Bezalel School Contrasts · Both put pictures inside symmetrical ornamental frames, but Vienna squared the frame into grids and bars while Bezalel filled it with Middle Eastern filigree, carpet and metalwork motifs.
- Wendingen & Amsterdam School Typography Contrasts · Both square their capitals into dense blocks inside symmetrical frames, but Vienna draws them by hand while Wendingen builds them from type metal; use the comparison to decide whether a heading should look drawn or assembled.