Art Deco Fairytales Calendar: Key Nielsen

Art Deco Fairytales 2015 Square 12x12 Flame Tree is available for preorder. Art Deco here means Kay Nielsen. Pronounced "Kigh," Kay Nielsen, for those in the know was an established fairy tale illustrator tapped by Disney for preliminary designs for Sleeping Beauty. Nielsen is one of my favorites, especially his Twelve Dancing Princesses and East of the Sun and West of the Moon illustrations.

This calendar has been produced the last few years and in my experience it sells out quickly and is hard to find through most of the usual sources. So grab it if you want it. And enjoy the pictures for several months before 2015!

East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Old Tales from the North (Calla Editions) and The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Other Fairy Tales (Calla Editions) have also been reprinted by Calla and are fine editions of Nielsen's work for an affordable price. I've gotten to handle original editions that are a little finer, but they sell for thousands of dollars, so these are an affordable substitute.

2014 Fairy Tale Calendars

I never did my 2014 Fairy Tales Calendar post this year! And these are selling out. They rarely have a large enough print run to make it through Christmas shopping.

First up is Art Deco Fairytales 2014 Calendar: With Glittered Cover--there was one of these last year--which in reality is a Kay Nielsen Fairy Tales Calendar since all of the illustrations are his. I'm not complaining since he is one of my favorites. Here is an image of the back with all twelve months' images. April is one of my all time Nielsen favorites from East of the Sun and West of the Moon.

P.S. Kay is pronounced KIGH and rhymes with HIGH; it does not rhyme with bay, may, say, etc. Kay Nielsen was a man, not a woman.

Next up are the calendars from Taschen--the illustrations for these are pulled from Taschen's The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. It offers illustrations by several illustrators.

You have the options for The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm 2014 (Taschen Wall Calendars) or The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm 2014 (Taschen Weekly Tear-off Calendars). I have the back of the wall calendar below and we get another of my Kay Nielsen favorites for January, this time from Twelve Dancing Princesses.

Here are images from the weekly calendar, too.

Finally, for the Once Upon a Time fans, there is the 2014 Once Upon A Time Wall Calendar.

Once again, here's the back so you see the annual images.

I haven't seen an official Arthur Rackham calendar from a large calendar publisher this year although some small press publishers have done a few.

Anyway, this is a fun way to get fairy tales into your office. I admit I waver between these and the Reading Women calendars every year. I always imagine they are reading fairy tales or a really great novel. There are always a few of those but most are already sold out except for the one from Pomegranate--The Reading Woman 2014 Calendar--the one I chose for next year. Looking at all of these women reading inspires me through the year, perhaps more than the fairy tale images.

Kay Nielsen's Little Mermaid

Kay Nielsen is a favorite illustrator for many readers here so I had to share this unusual Little Mermaid illustration although it's been floating around the new for a few years now. You can see the rest of his preliminary sketches for Little Mermaid at The Scepter on LiveJournal. Don't miss them!

The work is obviously sketches and unfinished work but there is enough there to imagine the look and feel of what Disney might have made Little Mermaid appear like in the mid 1940s versus what we got 40+ years later. Nielsen did influence what we saw in Fantasia and Sleeping Beauty, which is one of my visual favorites of the Disney fairy tales.

It has never been my favorite fairy tale--and it is hard to imagine that Nielsen's version would have been a  commercial success during the war-ridden years--but it would have been brilliant, I think.

New Release: The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Other Fairy Tales (Calla Editions)

The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Other Fairy Tales (Calla Editions) is another new release from Calla Editions. This, my dear readers, is one of my favorite books from the Golden Age of Fairy Tale illustration. I adore Kay Nielsen's illustration work, perhaps in part because it is so unexpected for me to love it. And this book is worth owning for The Twelve Dancing Princesses alone but then you get extra French fairy tales!Illustrated! By Kay Nielsen! How many more exclamation points do you really want from me on a Monday morning?!

And if you love this one, don't miss East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Old Tales from the North (Calla Editions) either. Because then you get East of the Sun and West of the Moon! Illustrated by Kay Nielsen! (I could do this all day so I'll try to stop the enthusiastic punctuation now.)

Book description:

Twenty-three exotic color illustrations in the Art Nouveau style complement a noted folklorist's masterful retellings of traditional fairy tales in a splendid hardcover edition. Seven tales of enchantment include "Minon-Minette," "Felicia, or The Pot of Pinks," "Rosanie, or The Inconstant Prince," "The Man Who Never Laughed," "John and the Ghosts," "The Czarina's Violet," and the title tale.

And for all of you not already in the know: Kay Nielsen was a man. And his first name rhymes with "high" not "hay." I hear it mispronounced all the time--well, the rare times his name is said in my presence. I am a horrible name and pronunciation person, but this one I can get right!

Video Tribute to Kay Nielsen by joshje777

Here is our Sunday morning video of a Tribute to Kay Nielsen, courtesy of joshje777. Enjoy! Check back next Sunday for the next in the series.