Somersaulting with dopey glee, a group of kangaroos thump around, lapping up wine from gravity defiant glasses.  Inebriated marsupials with bottles in their pouches?  Such a zany scene is characteristic of the work of beloved graphic artist and designer Ronald Searle (British, active France, 1920-2011).  His wry illustrations, ranging from caricature to cartoon and inspired...

Ragged, curvy and relentless, the pussy willow catkins in this print are symbolic of the battle for spring that marks the month of March.  Designed by Theodor van Hoytema (Dutch, 1863-1917) for a 1911 calendar, one can understand the month it represents even without translating the Dutch word at the top: “Maart” or March.  Known...

A snowy terrace, ebullient pink-tinged amaryllises, and a scarlet-coiffed maiden distinguish this winter-themed print by Eugène Samuel Grasset (Swiss, 1841-1917, active Paris, France, 1871-1917).  The print, which spells out “Décembre” in the upper left-hand corner, was a part of a set of calendar prints, organized by month.  Cooper Hewitt has eight of these prints in...

The brightly saturated colors of this August calendar page seem like a perfect salute to summer. To create the designs for this 1969 calendar, Takeshi Nishijima applied a paper-dyeing technique based on the traditional resist-dyeing process of katazome. Katazome relies on the use of katagami (stencils) to create hand-patterned textiles, most of which were used...