BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS
A new book about the Polish undead called ‘With Stake and Spade’ is bringing previously little-known ethnological records to 21st-century readers.
'With Stake and Spade. Vampiric Diversity in Poland' is an assemblage of ethnographic accounts, and written sources on vampires in Poland collected and described by Łukasz Kozak.
Vampires are rarely associated with the original Slavic folk figures.
'The publication (...) is unprecedented in its research and thought, being the first such comprehensive selection of written source material on vampires in Poland, or rather the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – a state that included parts of present-day Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania.'
My collage illustrations use clippings from the Polish National Library’s archives of folk tales from 15-19th c. Archival photos used in the illustrations create the context characteristic of the times the sources were written in. The main theme of the book is the belief in the living dead common in Slavic villages as well as ways of dealing with vampires called "UPIORs" and preventing them from teasing and killing the villagers. Every source provides the reader with the same advice: decapitation with a spade and placing the vampire's body back in the grave upside down with the head between their legs.
I wanted my illustrations of these horrific beliefs to be grotesque and graphic, instead of being as realistic as the texts itself.
All of the illustrations, including the ones on the cover, were hand-cut from paper. The illustrations are simple, not very detailed, frequently abstract; they rely on symbolism to lessen the striking effect of the gruesome descriptions.
You can find the book via ebay or buy directly from Evviva L'arte Foundation site:
https://evvivalarte.org/pl/produkt/lukasz-kozak-with-stake-and-spade-vampiric-diversity-in-poland-an-introductiona-and-sourcebook/
Thank you @culture_pl for making it happen
Layout design by @full_metal_jacket.studio
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