The pharmacist's costume

Habit d'apoticaire, in
“Recueil les costumes grotesques et les métiers de Nicolas de Larmessin”.

Reproduction of a 17^th-century engraving depicting the typical costume of a pharmacist, imagined as consisting of the tools of the trade – an alembic is worn as a hat and iconographically the most significant element, but there are also typical jars, tools, containers, a syringe and various medicinal plants. All visual elements are identified by inscriptions in French. From the work “Recueilles costumes grotesques et les métiers de Nicolas de Larmessin”.

The alembic is a distillation still, borrowed from alchemy, consisting of three parts. The cucurbit, a heated pot that contains the liquid to be distilled,   the ambic, covering the cucurbit like a cap, collecting the vapors and leading them down a descending tube, and   the receiver, holding the condensed distilled liquid. The term comes from Arabic (al-anbīḳ), in itself a borrowing from Greek (ambix), meaning cup or beaker.

My books and articles on ACADEMIA.EDU

I just wanted to share my academic profile as well, for those of you who want to get into more details on some of the topics that I have approached here as well. My profile on the excellent Academia.edu, which I recommend all authors to join as it is makes a treasure of sources available from peers, is well stocked with copies of the materials I have published overt the years. Some of the book only have the contents, as expected, but for most other I have tried to add copies and make them available online. So if you are interested in medieval and early modern stove tiles, the history of smoking, the history of wunderkammers / kunstkammerns, medieval material culture, and iconography, here is the place to explore: https://ceu.academia.edu/AnaMariaGruia 

Venus pudica

I have just added another listing in my Etsy shop, an original linocut print depicting a female nude (Venus to be more elegant). The title, Venus pudica, is inspired by an ancient iconographic type of depicting the goddess of love, in which she seems shy and hides her face and key parts of her body. The print is part of a series made last month for a special commission.

For the print I have employed Van Eyck brown typographic ink, applied by roller and by hand, and printed on white graphic paper. It is signed and dated in pencil, marked epreuve d'artiste as all items in the series are different in color and technique. Actual print size: 15x17 cm (5.9 x 6.7 inches).

See Venus pudica on Etsy.

 

Special order

I hereby present my first ever figurative depiction - a nude even! It is a combination of Matisse and myself, but it had to have some decorative features as well. The discrete pomegranates in the background are also symbolic.
The colors are the same as those of the last few projects, as I am not finished experimenting with them. The linocut is entitled "Venus pudica", inspired by the iconographic type of Venus shyly hiding her pudenda. I have made several variants, in natural colors, with the ink applied in various ways/combinations.

The eyes of art

There is definitely a fascination for the eye - the Eye of Providence / the All Seeing Eye / the Eye of God - and one can note that the depiction of a single eye, as symbol of seeing itself, is often more philosophical than the depiction of two or multiple eyes. The latter case is connected with paganism (the two-faced god Janus for example) or wildness (as indeed, in nature, several species have multiple eyes). My latest Etsy treasury looks for eyes in contemporary art - prints, pottery, tribal masks, and other types of decorative arts.