Featured on PDR in the collection Anton Seder’s The Animal in Decorative Art (1896)

One can’t quite call Anton Seder’s prints naturalistic in Das Thier in der Dekorativen Kunst. For one thing, there are the dragons, coiled and bug-eyed. Their scales and mottled patterns are familiar, but transformed into something more stylized and romantic: they are living, thrashing fleurs-de-lis. Then there are the sea creatures, gaping with almost human expressions. Fish fins flow with more grace and energy on his page than they do even underwater. The whiskers on prawns curl with calligraphic flourishes; a lobster and a crab lock claws, frozen in a dramatic stone tableau. Seder exploits vines and seaweed for their dynamic geometry, winding them into grand fibonacci spirals. Here is the “frisson de la vie — the quiver of life”, which is Jugendstil’s signature. Seder…