Of secret codes and Warja Honegger-Lavater

My fixation of the week is definitely the work of Swiss artist's book fairy tale encoding illustrator extraordinaire Warja Honegger-Lavater. I have always been obsessed with secret codes, especially those created by us when we're young or writing codes for diaries - they are a fascinating look into the personal - a way of distilling meaning for only a few and shutting out a public view. Codes by definition keep most people out. This has always fascinated me in terms of their use in writing projects - I love making up alphabets too and writing stories in them that somehow are in keeping with the visual impact of the letters created (I think there's an old post of one of these on here somewhere). This balance of drawing in the reader/viewer with intrigue, but still keeping them guessing to the meaning of the code whilst maybe understanding its essence is an incredibly interesting challenge to me. One of the things I love about Lavater's work is that she is not trying to hide meaning by using code, but to bring a story's meaning out further, or to distill the essence of the story. She gives us code translators (see William Tell example below) at the beginning of her books so we know what each symbol means - she lets us into her private world so that we may understand the world of a story better. And the fact that she illustrates folk tales (the example I've uploaded here is Little Red Riding Hood) means that she is illustrating a story we probably already know and have our own image of, probably an image that has become quite archetypal, but she takes the idea of archetypal away from the danger of cliche to an abstract essence. The words are erased as unnecessary as her pictograms speak to the viewer - she is illustrating the function of the words as well as what is happening. It is an incredibly brave and interesting way of interpreting illustration. And lest I forget, of course her work also looks lovely. And Maeght Editions

in France have published reproductions of her original accordian fold out artist books. Birthday list!

P.S. If anyone would like to send me any childhood or teen codes they made up that would be amazing for a project I'm working on...