Malika Favre's picto-porno-typographic cover for the Deluxe Classics edition of Vatsyayana's Kama Sutra, which I imagine will wrap all the way round the back and onto the French flaps. The red slashes of the gloves and stockings are the perfect extra element which makes this, I think.
See also Favre's rather more Sapphic variation on this, from her site (click for a bigger version, as the actress said to the bishop):
Then there's Max Ellis's cutaway cover for Titanic, First Accounts, another Deluxe Classics also making full use of the flaps. Here's the front and the full fold-out cover (sorry for the low-res version of the latter, but it's all I could find).
Here's a Max Ellis alphabet, vegetable in theme:
And finally, designer unknown, this simple but eye-catching cover for the great Nikola Tesla's autobiography, using the best handsome-devil photo of him that I know of.
Bonus content: The Doctor Who theme played on twin Tesla coils...
..and this great photo of Mark Twain in Tesla's lab, 1894...
5 comments:
Yeah, that Kama sutra does wrap to reveal the whole title made of the body letters. Great/simple idea, but the execution/style of the art is wonderful. Little bit of deco/art neuvo/egyptian—for a classic Indian text. Only under the auspice of Paul Buckley.
He's a bit of a bugger, that Paul Buckley: after getting his book on 75 Penguin covers, I had to buy a whole lot of them because of their beauty, and now I've nowehere to put them...
I'll keep them safe for you;)
Have you seen Kate Beaton's comic on Tesla? He is/was famously known as a celibate if I'm not mistaken and to be among a post of book covers with erotic undertones is so deliciously funny:)
Though I'm a big Beaton fan (and am very much looking forward to her imminent book) I'd forgotten that one!
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