Product Description

The geometric shapes and natural forms, captured with exceptional precision in Ernst Haeckel's prints, still influence artists and designers to this day. This volume highlights the research and findings of this natural scientist. Powerful modern microscopes have confirmed the accuracy of Haeckel's prints, which even in their day, became world famous. Haeckel's portfolio, first published between 1899 and 1904 in separate installments, is described in the opening essays. The plates illustrate Haeckel's fundamental monistic notion of the "unity of all living things" and the wide variety of forms are executed with utmost delicacy. Incipient microscopic organisms are juxtaposed with highly developed plants and animals. The pages, ordered according to geometric and "constructive" aspects, document the oness of the world in its most diversified forms. This collection of plates was not only well-received by scientists, but by artists and architects as well. Rene Binet, a pioneer of glass and iron constructions, Emile Galle, a renowned Art Nouveau designer, and the photographer Karl Blossfeld all make explicit reference to Haeckel in their work.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37311 in Books
• Published on: 1998-08-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: German
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 139 pages

Workshop on the Web, September 2005
‘Beautifully drawn forms…a wealth of opportunity for translation into…designs…A very good price for a lot of inspiration.’

Customer Reviews

An indispensible tool for any artist
I utterly adore this book. It's one that I come back to time and time again for visual inspiration. It is undoubtably beautiful to look at but it's also completely nutty in that delightfully mad Victorian way. People tend to think of this sort of very detailed drawing as being very accurate and as being "real art", yet nothing in nature is as symmetrical or refined as Haeckel drew it. He created an erzatz nature, a nature that is highly sylised to the extent that his forms read not as natural but as profoundly alien. The way he drew was not realism, but an extension of his scientific beliefs. Haeckel was a fervent believer in Darwinism and the essay at the beginning of the book is an interesting exploration of the way in which his belief overrode his scientific objectiveness, to the extent that his scientific research has since been proven totally false. He committed the cardinal sin in the scientific world of falsifying his data to fit his theories. Yet artistically he remains an influential yet little known figure, whose engravings played a huge part in the development of Art Nouveau and continue to inspire artists to this day. His work deserves to be much better known and this book should be on the shelves of every artist, designer and visually literate person.

best inspirational book
This is a book based on natural organism that we rarely see and yet the forms and shapes are amazing it is like seeing the creatures for the deep which exsist but we rarely see, the ones that seem so alien to us when we do get to see pictures of them.
This is one of the books that i have used over and over to inspire me for new projects.
i have also given or recogmended this book to countless amount of people in various craft fields from knitters to embroiders to jewellers and potters.
it is one of the inspiration sources that Antonio Gaudi used for some of his designs.

Essential
In every sense of the word. There's something relentlessly fascinating about this book, it's a monument to obsession, to the scientific viewpoint, to nature, too. The introductory essay is tedious beyond words, but still puts the images themselves in context - and what images. Timeless, intricate, bordering on heavy metal at times, with their spikes and prongs. These starkest images of micro-skeletons etc are the ones I treasure most. Unearthly - yet also simply a clear view on what is really there, in our world. Every home should have a copy!