Ernst Kreidolf «Der Traumgarten»

In 1897, the Gallery Arnold in Dresden exhibited several unusual watercolors with scenes from the life of flowers, created by a young and little-known Swiss artist, Ernst Kreidolf.

The drawings caught the attention of several children’s book publishers, and a year later Kreidolf’s first illustrated story, “Flower Fairy Tale” (Blumenmärchen), was published.

The book received positive feedback and was subsequently reissued many times. Thirteen years later, Kreidolf came up with a sequel to the story, in which the illustrations partially overlapped with the original edition, though the plot was slightly different. The funny stories about bizarre humanised flowers appealed to both children and adults alike.

Later on, Kreidolf went on to design numerous children’s books with flowers, caterpillars, grasshoppers, and gnomes as their characters. For some of them he also wrote the text himself. Thanks to his outstanding artistic skill, excellent sense of humor, and boundless imagination, Kreidolf’s graphic stories remain highly popular in Switzerland and Germany to this day.