Poster
Illustration for Märchenbücher Scholz, Mainz (publisher)
circa 1908
A brilliant tangle of
swirling tendrils, red-dotted grass and a twinkling, star-specked costume
outlining the squatting figure of a flame-bearded man. In sharp profile, he
stares happily and intently into the eyes of a little owl sitting between his
brittle fingers. They are a pair; one could not survive without the other. With
no owl the clownish man would appear cumbersome and clumsy in his world, too
large to fit in his own frame without a small, soft friend to keep his perspective
in check. With no kind giant the owl, too, would seem lost, dwarfed in a jungle
of such over-bearing plants without its great protector.
This illustration is consoling. It represents two souls, maybe outlaws of some sort, who have found
comfort in each other's company - something we can all possibly relate to. Each compliments the other's oddities. With
the same sense of desperation the owl and the man readily accepted each other without
judgement or question, recognising the familiar sense loneliness in the other, and because of this a mutual ground of reliance was created, a ground from which
their camaraderie has stemmed and strengthened ever since. Without question,
they are friends. A true union as this is a rare thing to come by and soon, with the development of this technology-based contemporary world in which we live, it will become even rarer.
