Iain Zaczek

This book isn’t a great example of thoughtful commentary and it doesn’t employ very good design techniques in its page layout, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the crash course in fantastical fairy art between its covers. The author started out strong with a selection of the classically trained artists who popularised the subject of fairies in artwork in the 1800s, which I was just starting to enjoy (barring their slightly repetitive writing style) when they switched tactic show more entirely to discuss a broader range of artists based on themes and inspirations for the artwork. Most of these themes had been discussed in the context of the major fairy artists, so their choice to rehash the details weakened the presentation of the additional artists they chose to feature. Of these selections, they could have also taken more care in grouping them, so that if an artist was featured more than once their images would appear together (once again we were forced to read the same facts) to enhance the visual flow of the slightly arbitrary selection. More than anything, this book served as an introduction to some of the major artists which will hopefully prompt readers to seek out additional material on artists they favour particularly. show less

I love these small books filled with art under specific topics.

You get a nice sampling of different styles that would not normally be together in once place.

The quality of the book itself is quite high with nice paper stock and binding and the color and details of the paintings come across beautifully, which is not always the case with art books.

A good overview of Art Deco across different mediums, from jewelry to advertising posters to architecture. I have always admired Art Deco when I recognized it but didn't know what actually constituted that style of art, what was "in" or "out" of that movement. I was really surprised to see how expansive the style is - many items in the book were well beyond what I would have identified. Now that I have a general grasp of what is and what is not Art Deco, I'd like to read a book that goes show more deeper on the topic. show less

This is a well laid out book will lovely full page illustrations on every odd-numbered page. The text is interesting and pitches the amount of information just right. It's a dip and browse coffee table book and works very well on that basis.

The irritating thing is that every even numbered page has a smaller image which is sometimes related to the large image, but not always. The small images are almost always images that appear elsewhere as full size images and I often found them show more distracting, especially in the cases where they weren't relevant to the text.

The book is sorted into carpets, textiles, wallpaper, etc, but aren't always in chronological order within sections.

The book irritates me on several levels, but the lovely illustrations make up for a lot of sins. show less