Good Faeries Bad Faeries [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Brian Froud is an artist with a flair for subtly coloured fantasy. Here he revisits the ethereal territory of his art books Faeries (with Alan Lee) and the comic- gruesome Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book (with Terry Jones)--the latter a Hugo award winner. Froud has a whole philosophy of faeries and their reality which some readers may find a bit woozily "New Age", though traditional lore and Jungian archetypes are also discussed. Symbolising his sense that "good" and "bad" can shift with viewpoint, this large-format volume consists of Good Faeries and Bad Faeries bound back to back, each upside down relative to the other. The fine artwork offers more variety than you might expect from this subject: traditional faeries, grotesques and comic figures (in both sections), horrors, abstract energy patterns, and crowded, symbolic scenes reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch or Richard Dadd. Just as in Paradise Lost, the bad guys can be more fun--from their hauntingly imagined Queen, through nasties like the Bigot Bogey and spirits of various dark emotions, to such familiar metaphorical nuisances as the Computer Glitch, Small Pang of Regret and Bad Hair Day Faery. Crammed with Froud's full-colour paintings, this is an attractive gift book. --David Langford -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

Why are large, illustrated works offhandedly relegated to gather dust on the corner of your coffee table? Sure, you will want to put Good-Faeries/Bad Faeries in an obvious place, somewhere your friends will see it and pick it up, but it's far more than mere decoration. Froud's illustrations have delighted readers since his first book, Faeries, introduced us to the little people of folklore. Good Faeries/Bad Faeries is a doorway to the faery realm of the 20th century, where you'll meet delightful characters like Quempel, who dances to celebrate when something is done well; or the Buttered Toast Faery, who decides which side of a dropped piece of toast will hit the floor--faeries who will call you back so often that Good Faeries/Bad Faeries won't have a chance to gather dust. --Brian Patterson

YA-Froud's collection of fanciful sketches encompasses both the benevolent and the malevolent species of the tribe Faeries. The structure of the book is reversible with the jacket proclaiming "Good Faeries," matched on the flip side with the title "Bad Faeries." An introduction to each section covers Faery Blights, Faery Defects, Glamour, and Music, and offers advice to humans on protection against the meddling of the Bad Faeries. There are paragraphs on naming, classification, and a further delineation of earth, water, fire, and air Faeries. This is followed by an exposition on Faery physiognomy-their wings, eyes, ears, heads, and size. Faery communication and healing are also discussed. The illustrations are the heart of the book, whether done in black and white, sepia, or full color. They are vivid, full of vitality, and wonderfully varied. With unnumbered pages, this is primarily a sketchbook for readers to leaf through and marvel at the creative bent that depicts the countenances of: "The Buttered Toast Faery," "The Wrong Decision Faery," and the "Pot Pixie." While not as glamorously elegant as their counterparts, the Bad Faeries are indeed beautiful in their own right. Handsomely jacketed, this is a whimsical, charming, artfully crafted book.
Frances Reiher, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A celebration of faeries good and bad, from the illustrator of }Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book{ giving an insight into the imagination of the artist and the mystical world within the human psyche. 200 colour illus, 15 b/w. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

A reversible volume in which good fairies such as the green man, the wood woman, and the pixies are described on one side, and bad fairies such the gnome, Black Annis, and Morgana le Fay are described on the other.

More info for fans of Froud's faeries:
I am the editor/co-author of Good Faeries/Bad Faeries, and would like to mention to fans of Brian Froud's wonderful faery art that there have been three adult novels published based on this work: my own novel, THE WOOD WIFE; Patricia A. McKillip's SOMETHING RICH AND STRANGE; and Charles de Lint's THE WILD WOOD. Each book is "modern mythic fiction" set in North America, filled with faeries, folklore, and inspired by Brian Froud's luminous mythic visions. We hope you'll seek them out.

Brian Froud is an award-winning illustrator and author. His books include the bestseller seller Faeries, with Alan Lee, Lady Cottington's Pressed Faery Book, and Strange Stains and Mysterious Smells, the latter two with Monty Python's Terry Jones. He also served as the conceptual designer on two of Jim Henson's films, The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. He resides in Devon, England, with his wife and son.

Preface from Good Faeries

Once upon a time, I thought faeries lived only in books, old folktales, and the past. That was before they burst upon my life as vibrant, luminous beings, permeating my art and my everyday existence, causing glorious havoc.

Until 1976, I lived in London and worked as an illustrator, creating images to go along with other people's words. Then I moved to a small country village in Devon, along with my friend Alan Lee and his family. As I walked through forests of oak and ivy, across the wild expanse of Dartmoor, among stone circles, Bronze Age ruins, and tumbled stones of old castle walls, I began to hear words and stories whispered by the land itself. I listened to those stories, soaking in the spirit of the land with its wealth of folklore and myth. Together, Alan and I created Faeries, a book of pictures and faery lore, which went on to become an international bestseller. This book was considered by many to be a definitive guide to the faery realm...but I soon discovered that my journey through the land of Faery had only just begun. I learned that the denizens of that land weren't confined to stories from an age long gone -- they were all around me, tangible pulses of energy, spirit, emotion, and light. They took on form as they stepped into my art, cloaked in shapes of nature and myth. I'd attracted their attention while creating Faeries, and they weren't finished with me yet.

In the years after the publication of Faeries I worked on many other projects, each of them steeped in magic. For Jim Henson, I designed two movies based upon my art: The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. I published other books such as The World of the Dark Crystal, Brian Froud's Faerielands, Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book, Strange Stains and Mysterious Smells, and The Goblin Companion (the last three with Terry Jones of Monty Python fame). Yet of all these publications, Faeries seemed to have captured the imaginations of the greatest number of readers. When I ventured out of my Devon studio to work on projects halfway across the world, people sought me out clutching wellworn copies of the volume. They were of all ages and from all walks of life, but they had one thing in common: an intense relationship with the book and an immense affection for the imagery within. The faeries had entered their lives, and shaped their dreams, and touched their hearts.

It has been twenty years since Faeries was published, and in that time I have never stopped my own personal intensive exploration of the faery realm. During these years I met my wife, Wendy, a sculptor and doll maker, on the set of The Dark Crystal; our son, Toby, was born; and we moved to a seventeenth-century Devon longhouse built on Saxon foundations. Faery paintings and drawings began to crowd me out of my studio, spilling into the rest of the house alongside my wife's mythic sculptures, woodland masks, and faery dolls. My paintings are not illustrations drawn from specific stories or folklore texts; rather, they are images painted intuitively, springing directly from visions guided by faery muses, a paradoxical mix of chance and intent. As this body of faery imagery grew, I also followed the faeries' footsteps in the study of world mythology, archetypal psychology, and magical esoterica. Through painting, I discovered much about faery nature in a daily, very personal way -- and then found these discoveries echoed in myth, folklore, art, and visionary writings from cultures all around the world.

Faeries was a book that concentrated on the Faeries of the past, found in old British tales. Good Faeries/Bad Faeries is about the magic in our lives today; it links faeries of the past with faeries of the present and the future. I'd always wanted this book to be more than just a presentation of my faery art. I'd also hoped to address the process of creativity and imagination that enables direct communication with the luminous, living faery realm.

In folklore, they say that those who can see the Faeries are blessed with second sight. Where some people perceive only empty fields, a man or woman with second sight can see a host of faeries dancing in a ring or the shining entrance to a faery hill. Where some notice only an ordinary street of shops or a marketplace, others see faeries in human disguise, paying for market goods with magical coins that will turn into mere stones and leaves when the faeries have gone.

Through painting pictures and listening to the spirit of the beautiful land where I make my home, I have discovered that the second sight is not limited to people in old folktales. We can all learn to have the sight to see the faery world around us. It shimmers in every autumn leaf and lingers in every cool blue shadow; it gives every stone and stream and grove of trees vibrant, animate life. Second sight can also be called in-sight: into the faery realms, into the very heart of nature and into the mystical world that lies deep within the human soul.

In ancient Greece, the word eidloa meant image, and eidolon meant soul. Image, then, was a way of understanding and envisioning the soul. This is a book of what I call "imaginosis," or knowing through image -- a book of images designed to spark self-revelation. Such images grow from my own inner journeys and daily contact with the faeries. By experience I have found them to be irrational, poetic, absurd, paradoxical, and very, very wise. They bestow the gifts of inspiration, self-healing, and self-transformation...but they also create the mischief in our lives, wild disruptions, times of havoc, mad abandon, and dramatic change.

Humans have long maintained close daily connections with the faeries. In centuries past, we've acknowledged them by many traditional names: boggarts, bogles, bocans, bugganes, brownies, blue-caps, banshees, miffies, nippers, nickers, knockers, noggles, lobs, hobs, scrags, ouphs, spunks, spurns, hodge-pochers, moon dancers, puckles, thrumpins, mawkins, gally-trots, Melsh Dicks, and myriad others. Just as they have many different names, they appear to us in many different guises. They are shape shifters, highly mutable, for no faery or nature spirit has a fixed body. In their essence, faeries are abstract structures of flowing energy, formed of an astral matter that is so sensitive as to be influenced by emotion and thought. In their most primal form, we perceive them simply as pulsing forces of radiant light, with a glowing center located in the region of the head or heart. (In the more highly evolved faeries, the head and the eyes are more strongly defined.) Responding both to mythic patterns and to human thoughts, these abstract forces delight in coalescing into wings and flowing drapery, taking on shapes that reflect the human, animal, plant, and mineral worlds.

In this book, we explore the nature of faeries in all their various shape-shifting guises. As guardians, guides, godmothers, and muses, the good faeries of the twilight realm are agents of self-growth and transformation, embodiments of the healing energies that flow through nature and through ourselves. Both luminous and illuminating, they reveal hidden aspects of our souls.

Yet as centuries' worth of folklore points out, faeries can also be tricksy creatures, delighting in all things irrational, nonsensical, and wickedly absurd. Did you ever wonder why your socks never match or buttered toast always falls facedown? Did you ever wonder what a Pang of Regret looks like? Or a Mild Panic? Here you'll see the faces and forms of the creatures behind these and darker problems -- the bad faeries who pinch us, nip us, trip us up, and lead us astray. Yet even bad faeries have their gifts to bestow when we understand their contrary natures. By recognizing and...