Pictures! We interrupt our normal programming to bring you coverage of a new book by Charles van Sandwyk, How to See Fairies, with some rather spiffy art to show off (all the illustrations should be clickable for much larger versions).

fairies charles van sandwyk — Illustration C2018 Charles van Sandwyk from The Folio Society’s How To See Fairies

A kindly move by us, for, as Dave Brzeski says in his article below, people nowadays (including greydogtales) do indeed like to take the fae/fey “back to their very earliest roots”, exposing their sly, inhuman ways –

Clinging to the cotton-grass, claws wrapped round stalks and stems, narrow heads lifting. Out of the half-world to play, soft pipes and changelings, curdled milk and blood on the bedsheets. The Children of Angles and Corners, as alike to the fey of folk-tales as a cleaver to a butter knife.

Their music is a scrape on glass, a lost child’s wail, forced through throats which do not quite exist. Their limbs twitch without sinews and bend where there are no joints. They see farmsteads and the flesh within, flesh that dances when plucked. Fat where they are lean, sweetmeats for their soured tongues…

The Horse Road, John Linwood Grant

But we shall not be perverse. This books reminds us more of lolling at home as children, flicking through the little ‘Flower Fairies’ books by Cicely Mary Barker (we were hoping that there would be more really malicious fey-folk – the Nightshade Berry Fairy was our favourite).

Art from another era, skilfully reborn today…

How to See Fairies and Other Tales

by Charles van Sandwyk

Reviewed by Dave Brzeski

Publisher: The Folio Society

Format: Hardcover in slipcase

I’m forced to begin this review with a question—Why have I never heard of Charles van Sandwyk before? This is almost inconceivable to me when you look at the superb quality of van Sandwyk’s artwork. It’s not as if he hasn’t been around a while. A quick look up on Wikipedia reveals that he’s had numerous books published since the late 80s, that he has paintings hanging in the National Library of Canada, as well as in several important private collections. Charles van Sandwyk is evidently not obscure.

This gorgeous, slipcased hardcover is, in fact a collection of previously printed works, collected together for the first time. Originally published in extremely limited edition runs by The Fairy Press, a division of Charles van Sandwyk Fine Arts. A good number of the illustrations are newly coloured, or completely new to this collection, thus making this volume an essential purchase even for those very lucky few to own copies of the original Fairy Press editions.

Illustration C2018 Charles van Sandwyk from The Folio Society’s How To See Fairies

The works included are…

The Fairy Market (2009)

How to See Fairies (1993)

The Gnome King’s Treasure Song (2000)

Pocket Guide to the Little People (1997)

Afterglow (2008)

Wee Folk (1994)

The Fairies’ Christmas (2001)

It’s immediately obvious that van Sandwyk is very familiar with the artists that trod this ground before him. In fact, this book is dedicated to Arthur Rackham, probably the greatest of them all. Van Sandwyk’s artwork is easily of sufficient quality to stand side by side with anyone from the grand master Rackham to Brian Froud. He even manages to capture the period feel of the earlier fairy artist’s work, while having a style completely of his own. One could wax eloquent about the brilliance of van Sandwyk’s artwork for page after page—there’s even a three panel foldout—but How to See Fairies isn’t simply a collection of great fantasy artwork. Van Sandwyk writes too…

It’s the fashion these days, to take fairy tales and the fae right back to their very earliest roots, by which I mean they tend to be a nasty, spiteful bunch and not something you’d ever be happy to encounter. Here, however, we harken back to the days when children’s authors presented a much kinder, more pleasant view of the little people. I certainly feel there’s room for both.

The Fairy Market, and indeed most of the book is told in verse and, astonishingly, van Sandwyk’s writing somehow manages to perfectly capture the style and feel of those classic children’s books most of us grew up with just as well as his artwork. It becomes immediately evident on reading that van Sandwyk isn’t simply knocking a few words together, on which to hang his pictures—the man can actually write!

van Sandwyk fairies — Illustration C2018 Charles van Sandwyk from The Folio Society’s How To See Fairies

Pocket Guide to the Little People and Wee Folk are more along the lines of a bestiary of the fairy folk, the latter being very much a small collection of pictures with few words. The final item, The Fairies’ Christmas, also breaks from the mould, in that it’s a rather delightful vignette, not told in verse.

Considering that van Sandwyk is a decade younger than I, I cannot help but be impressed with the way he effortlessly transports me back to those years before he was born, when my mother taught me to read at least a year before I started school.

If I could level any criticism at all at this beautiful book it would be that it’s in a rather too fine and expensive a format for children. I honestly can’t see many parents allowing their pre-schoolers to get their hands on it. Having said that, at £39.95, it doesn’t seem all that expensive for such a quality package.