Stephen Ellcock describes himself, borrowing a friend’s term, as an iconomancer: someone who conjures meaning by placing very different images side by side. For the past decade, through his books and widely followed Instagram account, he has foraged for pictures across cultures and centuries, with earlier books on natural elements, the subterranean and the cosmic. His latest book, Ark, published in October, is both a celebration of the natural world and a sober warning about what we stand to lose. We spoke to Stephen about Ark, the small Dürer watercolour that once made him gasp aloud, and why London’s pigeons may be his next subject.
You’ve previously produced books on natural elements, the subterranean and the cosmic. In October, you published Ark. Tell us about this book and what brought you to this new subject?
Well, Ark is a culmination of a lifelong obsession, but also a culmination of probably 10 years of image collecting and foraging. I've always wanted to have the opportunity to put together as comprehensive a book about the wonders and the glories of the natural world as possible within the framework of a 260-page book. And I finally had the opportunity to do so. I wanted it to be a celebration of the natural world, but also a kind of call to arms and a wake-up call because of the moment of profound peril that the world now faces with ecological disaster looming and apocalyptic scenarios that we need to address as a matter of urgency.
I wanted Ark to encompass everything as far as possible and to be in a tradition of the great books on natural history and illustrated books on natural history from the late 19th and early 20th century. They were hugely popular and tried to encompass everything and present an encyclopaedic view of nature for general readership. And apart from things like television tie-ins, that hasn't really been done from the kind of perspective of somebody like me who tries to put together things that are more outlandish and more unpredictable and to try and incorporate things from as many cultures, traditions and eras as possible. So, I hope it's both a beautiful celebration of what we stand to lose, but also a warning of what we're about to lose as well.
You've also recently published your esoteric sticker collection. Can you tell us a bit more about this project?
This was a bit of a departure for me in that it has a serious intent behind it, but it's more fun than the more serious projects I’ve done. And it's because I'd seen that there's a real trend for sticker books now, and I'd seen a few things which were kind of related to the arcane, the occult and magic et cetera. But I thought I could do something better because I have vast archives of things I've accumulated over the last decade or so, and I thought it could be playful and something that would be a fantastic gift for people that are interested in anything spooky or occult or magic related.
The vogue for stickers seems to show no sign of slowing down. It's intended as a reference tool as much as a book full of stickers for people to peel off and use; I thought it would be helpful for designers, artists, tattoo artists, jewellery designers, illustrators and so on.
What is your favourite image from Ark?
That's a very difficult question to answer, but I think I have the answer. It's probably one of the most mundane images in the book, which is Albrecht Durer's The Large Piece of Turf which is basically a gouache and watercolour painting of a patch of turf and weeds and things like dandelions and plantings and stuff. It's a truly magical image.
It depicts the most mundane thing imaginable. But it's completely sublime, the way that it is depicted. It represents what I try to do, by observation of the most mundane things, to find profundity and to find the sublime in every day. That painting is the most transcendent example of that. I remember seeing it in person on a very snowy morning in Vienna at the Albertina Museum, which was deserted because the weather was so atrocious, and walking through, turning a corner in these empty galleries and seeing this quite small watercolour. I think I probably let out an audible gasp, which I'm not prone to do in galleries and museums, but it's one of the few times I've done it. I probably issued an expletive or two as well. I thought, this is truly astonishing. It's basically a study of a patch of grass, but this encompasses a whole universe. I think that's the concept behind the book in a microcosm, trying to encapsulate a whole universe in a fairly modest framework.
You described yourself as an iconomancer. What is an iconomancer and how do you become one?
I didn't coin that expression. It was a friend of mine who's a French author and authority on the Tarot and other occult things – he described me as such. I think an iconomancer basically means someone that can conjure magic via images. So, if you're casting a spell, it's basically putting together disparate elements and creating something new. That's what magic is. You use different ingredients to create a whole new transmutation of everything. I think, I'm very good at pattern recognition, and I think that's what I do with my books and social media.
Sometimes it almost feels like I'm channelling something that is, without trying to sound like too much of a megalomaniac or too pretentious about it. It's like when people describe channelling things, if they're doing Tarot readings or other forms of fortune telling, sometimes things will come to me and I will sometimes find that it often happens in mysterious ways that I'll be looking for an image and then I'll stumble across it. It will suddenly appear. And this is sort of just online. There's an image I need to find of a certain thing and it will suddenly materialise. And I can't account for that other than I don't ascribe any sort of magical powers to myself. But I think if you're attuned to what you're looking for, then things will find you.
