Fairy Tales & Folklore Posters & Prints

Fairy tales are episodic stories involving a world filled with marvelous things and events - the hero (or heroine) overcomes evil and then live happily ever after. Based in folklore the fairy tales are written versions of oral and narrative tradiitons and include proverbs, jokes, and riddles. The study of folklore can identify religious and mythic elements that help recognize the interconnectedness between what otherwise appear to be total separate societies, however fairy tales usually regale the daily life.

"Fairy tales are more than true - not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten." G. K. Chesterton

Ali Baba (Cover Design for "The Forty Thieves"), 1897, Art Print, Aubrey Beardsley

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Beauty is Just in Time to Save the Beast's Life, illustrator Henry Justice Ford, Giclee Print

Beauty and the Beast captures our longing for good to triumph over evil, for enduring love and virtue to be valued more than gold.

Bluebeard Attempting to Kill His Last Wife, Fatima, Illustration from "Contes De Ma Mere L'Oye", illustrator Frédéric Théodore Lix, Giclee Print

Bluebeard is in the tradition of the one forbidden thing: "Eve, don't eat the apple.", "Psyche, don't look on his face.", "Pandora, don't open the box."

Cinderella and the Glass Slipper," (Aschenputtel), Illustration from "Les Contes De Perrault", Gustav Dore, Giclee Print

There are hundreds of versions of unjust oppression overcome by an attendant spirit and love. The earliest known version is Chinese from c. 860 AD.
• Cinderella opera poster

Goldilocks & the Three Bears Art Print - Jessie Wilcox-Smith, illustrator

The bedtime story "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", has been told so often that it lost attachment to its author, Robert Southey, one of the "Lake Poets" and Poet Laureate of England.

Rapunzel -

A woman, long childless, finds herself pregnant and craving the greens "rapunzel" growing in the walled garden next door. The husband, caught by the old woman gardener as he steals some of the rapunzel (also called rampion), promises her the newborn child, if she will only let him go. The old woman keeps the girl child "safe" in a doorless, stairless tower. When the old woman wants to visit Rapunzel she would command the girl to "let down her hair", and the old woman would climb up. Eventually a wandering prince sees the old woman climbing the long hair and uses the same access to meet and fall in love with the Rapunzel. When the pair are discovered, the enraged old woman pushes the prince out the high window into a bed of thornes that scratch his eyes and blinds him; she also casts the Rapunzel out. The homeless girl and the now blind, wandering prince find one another and Rapunzel's tears to joy cure the Prince's blindness. The End.

Rampion is a gourmet salad green - seeds here.

Rumplestiltskin,
Warwick Goble, illustrator

Rumplestiltskin is a dwarf or goblin who seeks an advantage by playing on the need for feeling important and greed - first the father brags his daughter can spin straw into gold, then the king wants lots of gold, so the girl bargains with a strange little man to fulfill the wishes of both men. What she has to do is give up her first born - but when the time comes the dwarf gives her a reprieve, if she can guess his name.

Rumplestiltskin is first mentioned in an adaption of of Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel.

Sleeping Beauty Giclee Print
Jennie Harbour, illustrator

Sleeping Beauty, a fairytale classic, has several versions. The basic theme is a much desired child is cursed because of an oversight by the parents in the invitations to the christening. The slighted fairy dooms the princess to prick her finger on a spindle and die. The good godmothers can only alter the spell so the Princess will fall asleep for a hundred years until a prince awakens her with a kiss. The King decides to eliminate the problem by banning all spinning from the land (this would be a huge hardship in those days - if no one was spinning eventually the kingdom would be without clothing.) Despite the prohibition on spindles, the day arrives when the princess sees an old woman spinning.

Curious about this strange activity, she reaches for the spindle, pricks her finger and falls asleep - as does everyone else in the kingdom. In one hundred years the prince show up, kisses the Sleeping Beauty, awakens everyone, and they all live happily ever after.

Little is known about the illustrator Jennie Harbor- her work was published by Raphael Tuck and Sons, the official publisher to Queen Victoria. Unfortunately all their records were destroyed in the Blitz of London, 1940.

Snow White,
Roland Risse, Illustrator

The Snow White story is another common theme in fairy tales: young child loses mother (primary protector), step mother devises a way to remove child from home, child survives and is stronger for the adventure (hero's journey). In other versions the mirror is the moon, and the seven dwarfs are seven robbers.

The Witch Baba Yaga, Illustration from the Story of 'Vassilissa the Beautiful', Russian Folk Tale, Ivan Bilibin, Illustrator, 1902

Baba Yaga is the wild old woman (Baba means grandmother), mistress of magic and a forest spirit. She flies about in a mortar, steering with a pestle - the imagary of putting together magic potions, and her house is built on chicken legs. Compare the Baba Yaga with the witch of Hansel and Gretel, or the wicked stepmother of Cinderella.

Bilibin was an influential 20th-century illustrator who was strongly inspired by Slavic folklore. He died during the siege of Leningrad in WWII.

• Russia posters