A Very Haeckel Christmas

Ernst Haeckel's 1904 "Kunstformen der Natur" [Artforms of Nature] is a classic of biological illustration. What is less generally known is that the artist started as a Christmas card designer. The book was originally simply an album of holiday designs.

"All the sweet things that the Squiddies/Twittering in the dewy spray/Wish each other in the springtime/I wish you this happy day."

During the Victorian era Christmas was indeed regarded as a 'happy' day, but one of uncanny terror; accordingly, cards and ornamentation featured strange creatures with too many tentacles. But then Santa Claus became popular, and many of these older designs 'fell out of fashion'.

Commercially marooned, unable to draw anything except tentacles and congeries of pustules/bubbles, Haeckel wandered into natural 'science' - almost as an afterthought - when he discovered that the stuff he had been drawing actually existed, give or take a tentacle. Isn't that interesting?

UPDATE: Dec 8, 2010. Hey, I finally made the book. "Mama In Her Kerchief and I In My Madness: A Visitation of Sog-Nug-Hotep - A Truly Awful Christmas Volume".

You can read the whole thing online here:

issuu.com/jholbo/docs/sognug?viewMode=ma gazine

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