POMEGRANATE

Eighteenth-century Venetian etcher Giovanni Battista Piranesi thought of himself as an architect. Piranesi—son of a stonemason, nephew of an engineer, and brother of a Carthusian monk—studied stage...

Maybe you've had the pleasure of taking a nap under a patchwork quilt, enjoying its bright Colours and dazzling patterns as well as its warmth. Quilts are often made by piecing together cloth shapes...

"America is a land of wonders," famed French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1835, "in which everything is in constant motion." Railroads have been a prime means of seeing those wonders since...

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919) is one of the most well-loved painters in the history of modern art. Mostly he painted landscapes in the south of France, scenes of his family, and portraits...

Growing up on a farm, Robert Bissell learned to love animals and nature. When he became a painter, he chose to make pictures of wild animals living in an enchanted land. The rabbits and bears in his...

How would you Colour a Crabby Crab Cabbie? How would you ornament an Outlandish, Oboe-playing Octopus? In his book The Amazing Animal Alphabet of Twenty-Six Tongue Twisters (Pomegranate, 2013),...

Rosalind Wise's spectacular Flower Cycle—painted on a canvas nearly seven feet high and eight feet wide—overflows with Colourful blooms so fresh and delicately detailed that you can almost smell them...

One of the most popular writers in nineteenth-century Japan was Bakin, who lived from 1767 to 1848. His most famous book, The Tale of the Eight Dog Heroes of Satomi, or Satomi Hakkenden in Japanese,...

In 1786, publisher John Boydell (1719–1804) forged a plan to publish an edition of Shakespeare's plays with illustrations by the top artists of the day. Boydell's goal was to establish an English...

A note from the artist Welcome to the world of the sri yantra, with its capacity to balance, heighten, and attune your energy and awareness. The sri yantra comes from ancient India and is a...

"Polynesian art is a form of humbleness and soothes the mind and soul," says tattoo artist Anthony J. Tenorio. His Pacific Islander background inspired his passion for the traditional art of tatau,...

A collection of 1,001 adventurous and fanciful tales, the Arabian Nights stories were told in Persia, Arabia, India, and Asia for thousands of years before they were written down. These ancient tales...

More than one hundred years after they were first drawn, Walter Crane's fairy tale illustrations remain full of magic. The beloved children's book illustrator brought life to classic stories. Some...

The Group of Seven brought together Canadian artists who were searching for a new way to paint. They wanted to make art that helped people understand the way our Canadian landscape looked and felt...

Widely regarded as one of the most exquisite books ever printed, the Kelmscott Chaucer is the masterwork of William Morris (1834–1896) and Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898). Published in 1896, more than...

Since its publication in 1900, L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has become America's greatest and best-loved homegrown fairy tale. Illustrated by W. W. Denslow, the story tells the tale of...

The artist Edward Gorey (American, 1925–2000) created a diverse menagerie ranging from Menacing Monsters to Sleepy Cats. One of his creepiest Creatures was an Ump renowned for its Wuggliness. Mr...

We give all sorts of things an extra layer of meaning, a symbolic meaning. A white bird in a painting is a dove, but it's also a symbol of peace. Since peace is an idea, it can't be drawn directly,...

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933) was the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, who founded the Tiffany and Co. jewelry store. Louis Comfort Tiffany began his artistic career as a painter. As a young man he...

Tom Thomson (Canadian, 1877–1917), the sixth of ten children, grew up on a farm near Leith, Ontario (on the shore of Georgian Bay), but chose to earn a living as a commercial artist. He was an avid...