The Playful Eye brings together for the first time an extraordinary international collection of visual materials which exploit the universal love of visual play.
Every page offers a puzzle or a conundrum to tease the eye and intrigue the mind. These are not merely optical illusions but irresistable games for the eye to play: visual puns, hidden images, transformations, upside-downs and rebuses. The images are wonderfully diverse: comic, poignant, ingenious, sinister; some are robustly grotesque, some are simply beautiful.
The book draws on rare original ephemera, most of it virtually unknown, and is a uniquely elegant compendium of 19th and early 20th century popular graphics, brilliantly presented in full colour throughout. Introductions to each section add the pleasure of the text to those of the eye.
