Illustrations by Nika Goltz (Ника Гольц) for a 1961 edition of Prince Odoevsky’s “Town in a Snuffbox”
My friend at bookvart turned me on to the treasure trove of Soviet illustration at da-zdra-per-m. You can see the full book there. I plan to feature images from this collection from time to time. My own collection of Soviet kids’ books is puny and pathetic in comparison.
Last year Coilhouse featured a great 1981 version of “Snuffbox” and gave an outline:
It’s a tale of a boy who travels inside a wind-up musical snuffbox to find a town called “Din-Din” and anthropomorphic bells, hammers, springs and cogs inhabiting it. The bells tell young protagonist Misha about their life of forced music-making and daily beatings from the dreaded hammer-men. The hammer-men explain that they’re just following orders from their superior, who in turn takes his orders from Queen Spring. Displeased by all the violence an bureaucracy, Misha confronts Queen Spring and brings down the system by uncoiling her.
A contemporary of Pushkin and Gogol, Vladimir Odoevsky has been called both the “Russian Hoffmann” and the “Russian Faust.” There are some collections of his work in English: The Salamander and Other Gothic Tales, Two Princesses, and Russian Nights.
Here’s a link (with some amazing images) to a feature on Nika Goltz (in her own words): Russian / Google translation. (I almost published this post thinking the illustrator was a man named “Nick Golz” — so much for Google translation… not that my blog could exist without it…)
Previously:
—Night Hallucinations
—Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others
—Mummy was a robot, daddy was a small nonstick kitchen utensil
—Dedicated to you but you weren’t glistening
—Klop (The Bedbug)
