In our world filled with dour utilitarianism, a thing of whimsy is a joy most welcome. Enter British illustrator Lyndsey Green and her privately published Gryphonology – The Pocket Guide to Griffins of the World. This small and precious book – Green herself quite too modestly calls it a “zine” – is best described as a rather fabulous idea very well executed.
Throughout a mere twenty pages, the reader is treated to a remarkably colourful variety of said griffins, or gryphons; whichever you prefer. Being of a notoriously shy nature and thus spotted by humans on the rarest of occasions only, these mythical and often majestic creatures of the air were long deserving of their own bestiary. Lyndsey Green has done them justice in images and words.
Leafing through Gryphonology we learn, amongst other things, that the Iphoki griffin or Leucocephalus puma of Northern America is revered by the Native American tribe of the same name, who regard the fierce animal's feathers as sacred. New to us also was the interesting fact that the blue Indonesian griffin (there is, of course, the more common red one as well), referred to by exoticologists as Paradisaea Neofelis rudolphi, spends his or her days mainly hanging upside down from tree branches and swaying. A lazy griffin; who knew?
Perhaps the pièce de résistance of this instructive, lovingly illustrated and designed publication is the double page dedicated to that most elusive of the species: the painted griffin. Ramphastos Pardalis sulfuratis, one of the supposedly very few zygodactyls among the griffin family, had hitherto been a zoological enigma; a near-figment of the imagination, if you will. It is greatly to Miss Green's credit that she managed – after prolonged research in South-American jungles and with, we can only surmise, many a dangerous encounter of the clawed and winged kind along the way – to capture no less than four different varieties of the Ramphastos. We applaud her dedication and efforts. Gryphonology, in short, is the wonderful little griffin volume Ernst Haeckel never produced.
Copies of this indispensable work for gryphonologists can be obtained from Lyndsey Green directly at her website. A stroll through Green land will, incidentally, reveal her passion for wildlife in general and illustrate that penchant for the whimsical mentioned above. To close this perhaps somewhat unorthodox entry to Wormwoodiana, we think that the “Nice hair” greeting card is at least worthy of an honourable mention and a bonus purchase.
(Oliver Kerkdijk)
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