The Meeting of Oberon and Titania by Arthur Rackham (1905) (via)
Perfect
An Edmund Dulac illustration for Shakespeare's The Tempest. 1908.
Rip van Winkel Fairies by Arthur Rackham
Peter Pan (2003)
Robert Huskisson (1820-1861), Come unto these yellow sands, 1847
To be honest, these have always creeped and repulsed the living Hell out of me. I attended a show of Farmer’s in NYC, lasted about 10 minutes and then I hightailed it out of there; I was just that bothered. They’re fantastic, though, so here you are:
Tessa Farmer - Swarm (2004) - mixed media, desiccated insect remains, dried plant roots, and other organic ephemera
“Farmer’s tiny sculptures give a glimpse into the world of fairies. No story-book land of Tinkerbells, Swarm envisions the purveyors of mischief and magic as an actual species, as animalistic and Darwinian as any other.
Exchanging Victorian romanticism for the darker pragmatism of science, Farmer evidences her specimens as fearsome skeletal fiends, plausible ‘Hell’s Angels’ of a microscopic apocalypse.
Posed in dramatic battle formations, Farmer’s menagerie wages war against garden variety pests; each figure, painstakingly hand crafted and adorned with real insect wings, stands less than 1 cm tall.”
An illustration by Paul Wood-Roffe for “The Tempest” by William Shakespeare, 1905
Illustration by Cicely Mary Barker