This is a smaller-than-life-size image of one of the pages in the book The Affected Provincial's Companion, a compendium of -- how to describe it? -- aesthetic musings, sartorial suggestions, historical anecdotes, philosophical levity, personal tidbits, political implications, botanical info, witty illustrations, helpful diagrams, and general silliness. It's the work of the sweetly twisted mind of Lord Whimsy (not to be confused with the fictional Lord Peter Wimsey of Dorothy L. Sayers fame), one of whose blogs is listed on the Cogblogroll to the left, but whose work I've long wanted to highlight yet didn't dare do during the deadly serious election season.
Lord Whimsy is actually Victor Allen Crawford who, with his wife Susan, runs the graphic design firm Plankton Art Co. If you want to engage him professionally, you can get him there. But if you just want to drink in his perfumed peculiarities, you're better off going to his alter ego's website, where you can find, among other things, his manifesto, pictures of strange lichens and fungi, colors, textures, and other images of beauty, and even political statements such as this:
No less a personage than Johnny Depp has also been enraptured by Lord Whimsy's bounteous, beautiful life, and so has bought the rights to his book with the intent of making a movie of it (yes, god knows how, but it should be fun to watch!). When not accepting invitations to speak at such places as the Corduroy Appreciation Club, Lord Whimsy tries to create out of his life a work of art. His head is bursting with ideas. Spend enough time with him, and yours will be, too.
