The Magic Carpet

While I was in New Orleans, I got to go to Arcadian Books and poke around just a little.  We only had a few minutes to browse, but in that time, I managed to find a signed copy of the Ellen Douglas/Walter Anderson book The Magic Carpet.  It was, in fact, one of the first books that caught my eye, almost like it was sitting there on that high shelf waiting on me. I grabbed it quickly and tucked it under my arm with a heart filled with glee.  It is, after all, February, the month I fill with those tiny little delights to fend off the Birthday Crap.  This jewel qualifies in the extreme. 

The Magic Carpet is a combination of Walter Anderson's woodcuts for folk and fairy tales and Ellen Douglas' prose retellings of the tales that inspired him to make those wonderful works.  This is the first time I've actually been able to get my hands on it although I've been wanting it for years.  It's so lovely it makes me sigh.

I love Walter Anderson's art in all the forms I've found it, watercolor, woodcut, carved figure, ceramic form....  His watercolors are experiments in the spirit translated into solid form, and his woodcuts always remind me of the art of some lost culture.  I have several of them bought from Realizations on the coast hung in various places here in the house.  The combination of his otherworldly art and Douglas' sensitive and unusual tellings of these familiar tales makes for a book I can pick up with pleasure again and again.

I have it sitting on the old army trunk I use for a coffee table.  It looks right there.  It is both something I've wanted for a long time and a reminder of a good recent trip.  I guess it was an early present from the Crescent City.