1924
My post "Extraordinary early 20th century book covers from Japan" got a good response so I'm doing an immediate follow-up, this time featuring magazine covers. I'll just repeat myself:
These covers come from Bookcover Design in Japan 1910s-40s (ISBN 4-89444-426-7) edited by Masayo Matsubara. Published in 2005 by PIE Books, this incredible book is already out-of-print and becoming hard to find (it was actually hard for me to find and I spend hours per day searching for rare books). This book is in Japanese only, but of course you need it for the 650 illustrations.
Many of the images in the book are small, so it was fun blowing them up through hi-res scanning. Click for much larger versions.
I tried to alternate the charming children's covers with the creepy modernist covers, but I soon lost the ability to tell one type from the other.
1934
1924
1940
1917
1936
1936
1929
1922
1933
1915
1928
1931
1926
1917
1929
1936
1932
1930 (chin face)
1926
1921
1917
1913
9 comments:
mind-blowingly amazing!
great post. So did you actually buy all of these?
That's crazy talk. Seriously, I wish I knew exactly what they are and where I could buy them, but the likelihood of that happening is slim.
These all come from Bookcover Design in Japan 1910s-40s (as mentioned in the post), which is out of print (and all in Japanese) but there are hopefully a couple copies floating around the internet. 600 more images where these came from! I picked my favorites, but every time I open the book I find 20 new favorites.
At Urawa museum near Tokyo, they had an exhibition with japanese magazine covers of more or less the same period (Showing only the first issue of each magazine). They have a catalogue, that was still available a few month ago.
Cheers
Antoine
http://twitter.com/iwamon
I believe the term is, uh.. wow. Incredible.
Yes, these are all great, too.
Thanks for posting these, Will.
These magazine covers from the early 20th century are simply amazing. Great work!!
You have an amazing blog, I followed Moon Rat's link here... My mother used to have magazines like this, so she is kicking herself now for throwing them away...lol
thank you for sharing these covers!
Outstanding collection. These beautiful, masterful creations have totally inspired me to branch out some design ideas I've been having.
Exquisite spacing, color, detail. I can't say enough. I'm going down to the antique shop to see if I can find some designs like these.
Thanks for the great post.
Some illustrations seem to be inspired by russian styled drawings. Japan was not so isolated then.. Your posts on german and japanese book covers are vert inspiring. Thank you
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