Alice’s style

Ksenia LAVROVA is professional artist; she graduated the Baron Stieglitz Academy (former the Mukhina Leningrad’s higher artistic professional school). From 1986, she cooperated with the publishing house ‘Special literature’, which issued L. Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” with 150 illustrations made by Ksenia. 

Lewis Carrol’s «Alice » is one of the most enigmatic and convoluted creations in world’s literature. However, the sheer intricacy of its plot untied my hands giving me a significant artistic freedom, while  classical literary works, more rigidly structured, often force the illustrator into a rather cautious and self-limiting attitude. 

In “Alice”, the plot literally rushes from one point to another, as if down a rabbit-hole. The main character changes her appearance just as quickly, sometimes leaving the bewildered reader far behind. This phantasmagoria allowed me much freedom in defining Alice’s style and image, as well as all other characters in the book.

I did not wish to copy any historical costume style, but preferred a certain “variation on a given theme” approach. Thus, sometimes Alice is dressed as a Spanish Infanta, or in a Napoleonic era “robe parisienne”; as Alice crosses the Pool of Tears, she wears a Venetian “corso” gown and a ferronière on her forehead...

The Queen is dressed with the same attention to character details. For instance, I made her wear a black eye-patch, Admiral Nelson style. As her conduct tends to be rather reprehensible, I chose to style her as an “elegant brigand” from the Elizabethan era.

However, the first character to appear on the page was the Rabbit who, in a sense, drives forward the plot. He was styled after Lord Byron, a “fashion icon” and a perfect embodiment of dandyism. Then came the Duchess, the Queen and the Mad Hutter.

I was able to work calmly and meticulously. The characters appeared in a multitude of costumes, colorful and finely decorated. The reader will surely notice numerous and varied insects in my illustrations. They are there partly because Alice fell asleep on a patch of grass full of little crawlies, but also as an expression of my particular fascination with Nature. As a child, I wished to become a zoologist and studied very seriously, even participated in a kids’ zoology club. That is probably the main reason for all these insects filling every nook and cranny of my pictures.

This book has everything. However, I did not intend to create flashy, overly colorful illustrations. In the course of my preparatory work I studied many examples of late 19th century book graphics. In my drawings, I wished to preserve this particular aesthetics and chose a black and white illustration style with just hints of color here and there: after all, it is a book intended for children. This is how I found this mix of black and white graphics with splashes of color.

To continue the analogy with the Art Nouveau book graphics,
I aimed at creating this book as a piece of art, an item acquired not only for reading, but for keeping as a heirloom for generations to come. And I am glad to see this book became a collector’s item not only in Russia, but in other countries as well.

My work on illustrating “Alice” lasted for two and a half years. I was fortunate to have a publisher that never intervened in the process, letting me enjoy total artistic freedom. As a result, all my original illustrations, while officially belonging to the publisher, participated in several exhibitions and were commercialized as copies and prints, many of which now adorn kids’ rooms in different countries. Apparently, the characters started living their own lives even before finding their place in the book.