https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/garland-blood-collages/ * Home * Essays * Collections * Explore * Shop * Support PDR * About * Blog Search Search The Public Domain Review [ ][View All Results] The Public Domain Review The Public Domain Review PDRSupport PDR * Essays * Collections * Explore * Shop * About * Blog * * * * Collections / Images The Blood Collages of John Bingley Garland (ca. 1850-60) [blood-coll] Detail from a single-page collage by John Bingley Garland, ca. 1850-60, featuring Mary Magdalene beneath a violin-playing cherub -- Source. The novelist Evelyn Waugh was an inveterate collector. His interest was Victorian arcana -- bric-a-brac unfashionable in his time, even gauche, and cheaply acquired. He had a soft spot for histrionic decorative objects, and furniture much larger than function demanded. By his own account, Waugh's taste referenced the musty, redolent home of his three maiden aunts, a house that hadn't been altered since 1870, which had entranced Waugh as a young child. Brownish oil paintings; mounted butterflies; glass cabinets of fossils; a taxidermized monkey on the bathroom shelf. "It all belonged to another age, which I instinctively, even then, recognized as superior to my own." In middle-age, Waugh turned his collector's eye toward books, telling Life magazine in 1946 that he was now "collect[ing] old books in an inexpensive, desultory way". Indeed, he amassed some 3500 volumes, all of which were transferred after his death to the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas. Despite the size of Waugh's library, the archive had no trouble designating its "single most curious object". That distinction belonged without question to the Victorian Blood Book. blood collage by GarlandScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Detail from a page of John Bingley Garland's "Blood Book", featuring a cut out from William Blake's engraving titled The Soul exploring the recesses of the Grave -- Source. The Blood Book is handmade, folio-sized, with a handsome marbled endpaper and forty-three pages of exquisitely crafted decoupage. John Bingley Garland, the manuscript's creator, used collage techniques, excising illustrations from other books to assemble elegant, balanced compositions. Most of the source material is Romantic engravings by William Blake and his ilk, but there are also brilliantly colored flowers and fruits. Snakes are a favorite motif, butterflies another. A small bird is centered on every page. The space between the images is filled with tiny hand-written script that reads like a staccato sermon. "One! yet has larger bounties! to bestow! Joys! Powers! untasted! In a World like this, Powers!" etc. The book's reputation, however, rests on a decorative detail that overwhelms: To each page, Garland added languid, crimson drops in red India ink, hanging from the cut-out images like pendalogues from a chandelier. Blood drips from platters of grapes and tree boughs, statuaries and skeletons. Crosses seep, a cheetah drools, angels dangle bloody sashes. A bouquet of white chrysanthemums is spritzed. To be clear, Garland's blood is not that of surgery or crime or menses, but of religious iconography. He obviously intended the blood to represent Christ's own. And yet the final work suggests that the properties of actual blood tugged the artist's shirtsleeves, pulling him away from the symbol and towards its source. It's as if God gave Garland permission to fetishize hemorrhage. The Blood Book isn't the only evidence of this fixation. Garland also made several single-page collages, now dispersed in various museums. In these, the imagery is more densely layered and the compositions more clamorous than those in the Blood Book, but the trademark drips remain. blood collages by GarlandScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Two single-page "blood collages" by John Bingley Garland, ca. 1850-1860 -- Source: left, right. (The image on the left is available as a print in our online shop.) blood collages by GarlandScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Two single-page "blood collages" by John Bingley Garland, ca. 1850-1860 -- Source: left, right. blood collages by GarlandScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Two single-page "blood collages" by John Bingley Garland, ca. 1850-1860 -- Source: left, right. It's not clear that Garland ever saw collages like the ones he decided to make. While Victorian scrapbooking could sometimes veer toward collage, the Blood Book is in a different category entirely, deploying techniques usually dated to Cubism in the early twentieth century. There is no evidence that Garland even considered himself an artist. Born in Poole, England, in 1791, he was a politician and merchant who joined the family fishmongering business. The fish came from Trinity, Newfoundland, such that Garland moved back and forth between Poole and Trinity, distinguishing himself in both places. He was Newfoundland's first speaker of the house and a two-term mayor of Poole; with his brother, he spearheaded the building of a church in Trinity. He seems to have retired early, leaving public life around age forty-five, though he lived another four decades. The occasion of the Blood Book was the 1854 marriage of his daughter Amy, who treasured it as the pious craft of a loving father. Her heirs rejected the Blood Book nickname, preferring "Amy's Gift". (Garland's own title--Durenstein!, a cryptic reference to the castle in which King Richard the Lionheart was ransomed during the Third Crusade -- didn't stick.) It's not surprising the Garland heirloom ended up in Waugh's library. The Blood Book's singularity would have spoken to any collector of mid-Victorian whatnots, and Waugh was moreover a devout Catholic. But it was perhaps the specific pitch of Garland's creation that made the purchase inevitable, the breathless exuberance of so many exclamation points, and so much exclamatory blood. For a man famously cynical and perpetually bored, the Blood Book was the perfect novelty. Below you can browse all forty-one collages from Garland's Blood Book, courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center. Text by Sasha Archibald Published September 20, 2022 Medium * Images Theme * Religion * Myth & Legend * Victorian Style * Collage Epoch * 19th Century Tags collage4blood3christianity11 Source Source Harry Ransom Center Rights Underlying Work PD Worldwide Rights Digital Copy No Additional Rights Rights Download Download Right click on image or see source for higher-res version John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. John Bingley Garland collage from Evelyn Waugh's Blood BookScroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Want this image on your wall? We've the image from this post in our online prints shop--all custom made to the highest standards, framed or unframed, and shipped to your door. Buy Print If You Liked This... Hand holding envelope Get Our Newsletter Our latest content, your inbox, every fortnight Privacy Policy More Info [ ][ ] HP[ ] [Subscribe] Become a Friend of the PDRPostcardsWe rely on our annual donors to keep the project alive. Perks include receiving twice-a-year our very special themed postcard packs and getting 10% off our prints.Find Out More Prints for Your Walls Explore our selection of fine art prints, all custom made to the highest standards, framed or unframed, and shipped to your door. Start Exploring The Public Domain Review * Essays * Collections * PD Remix * Conjectures * Curator's Choice * Bibliography * Shop * PDR Press Books * Support PDR * About * Contact * Blog * Contributors * Sources * Submissions Subscribe to Our Newsletter * * * * Using Material * Rights Labelling * Terms and Conditions * Privacy Policy * Returns Policy * Shop FAQ The majority of the digital copies featured are in the public domain or under an open license all over the world, however, some works may not be so in all jurisdictions. On each Collections post we've done our best to indicate which rights we think apply, so please do check and look into more detail where necessary, before reusing. Unless otherwise stated, our essays are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license. Strong Freedom in the Zone. The Public Domain Review is registered in the UK as a Community Interest Company (#11386184), a category of company which exists primarily to benefit a community or with a view to pursuing a social purpose, with all profits having to be used for this purpose. Pantagruel Sign Up for Our Newsletter! The latest wonders from the site to your inbox. Once every two weeks. [ ][ ] HP[ ] [Subscribe] Privacy Policy | More Info You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link in our emails. * * * I have read and agree to the Terms and Conditions --------------------------------------------------------------------- {{ number }} {{ $localize("payment.title") }} {{ $localize('payment.no_payment') }} {{ $localize('payment.place_order') }} Pay by Credit Card --------------------------------------------------------------------- Pay with PayPal {{ $localize('cart.summary') }} {{ $localize('actions.edit') }} --------------------------------------------------------------------- Click for Delivery Estimates --------------------------------------------------------------------- Click for Delivery Estimates {{ $localize('cart.shipping_taxes_calculated_at_checkout')}} {{$localize ('errors.order_validation.custom_fields_validation.description')}} {{ $localize('actions.checkout') }} Sorry, we cannot ship to P.O. Boxes. Sorry, we cannot ship to P.O. Boxes.