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Magazines – their past, present and future
Archive for the 'illustrators' Category
Mayfair magazine, Lord Desborough and The Thames
Mayfair magazine's 1914 caricature by 'Pip' of Lord Desborough as the personification of 'The Thames'
There are many magazines named after places, particularly London districts and roads: Pall Mall, the Strand, Charing Cross and Cornhill spring to mind. A new one on me is Mayfair, which seems silly given the men's magazine, but this is a copy of Mayfair magazine of 1914, just before the start of the First World War.
The masthead of Mayfair magazine. The name is expanded to include 'and Country Society' with a Latin motto
Mayfair was a society weekly in the mould of Vanity Fair – with a similar page size and format, and complete with a colour 'cartoon' portrait of a leading person of the day. It ran from 1911 to 1922, according to the British Library's collection. This issue describes itself as 'the only cartoon illustrated weekly' because Vanity Fair, which dated back to 1868 with its chromolithography caricatures, had closed in January that year. The cartoonist was 'Pip' for the cartoon of Lord Desborough, as the personification of 'The Thames' for his work on building a new lock on the river. At Vanity Fair, the profiles were written by 'Jehu Junior' (Thomas Gibson Bowles, the magazine's editor and owner); Mayfair's were by 'Junius Junior'. Vanity Fair's prolific cartoonists included 'Ape' and 'Spy'.
At over six feet tall, Desborough was a famous athlete as a runner, rower and fencer. He brought the Olympics to London in 1908. However, 1914 saw the start of several travails in his personal life. Two of his three sons were killed during during the war. The Times mistakenly ran his obituary on 2 December 1920, having being confused him with Lord Bessborough. His third son died after a car accident in 1926. Desborough himself died in 1945 at the age of 90.
The front cover of Mayfair magazine showing a statute of Minerva from Rome
This issue was a 'special river supplement', with 11 of its 24 pages devoted to the Thames, in addition to a colour plate of the source of the Thames, based on an engraving from 1873. The pages covered the river from its source near Oxford to Teddington Lock and were copiously illustrated with photographs, including of Eton, Magna Carta island and Taplow Court – 'Lord Desborough's famous riverside seat'. Very much the Hello! magazine treatment of the Edwardian era. (Today, Taplow Court is owned by a Buddhist group.) Several photographs show the opening of Boulter's lock on the river in 1912, with Desborough in many of them.
The title page shows the masthead with a Latin inscription: 'De omni re scibili et quibusdam aliis' ('Concerning all knowledge and other peoples'. This may be a reference to 'De omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis', the frontispiece etching from George Cruikshank's Omnibus of 1842. The cartoon tries to portray everything and even more by crowding people on the earth.
A full-page advert – illustrated by 'Pip' – promotes the Mayfair Salon at the magazine's premise where readers could commission a life-sized painting in oils or water colours. The magazine entrepreneurs of the era were never short of ideas for making a few bob.
Mayfair was published from 7 Albemarle Street, just off Piccadilly in Mayfair. A previous resident of 7 Albemarle Street was the Royal Thames, the oldest continuously operating yacht club in the world. It was established in 1775.
Mayfair magazine showing photographs of Boulter's lock on the Thames from 1912 with Lord Desborough
Given the price of property, it's difficult to imagine many publishers being based in that street today, but as well as Mayfair, John Murray, the book publisher, was at 50 Albemarle Street, from 1812 for the best part of two centuries. John Murray published Byron, Austen, Darwin, Livingstone, Betjman and many others who will have walked through its doors. And, in a famous example of literary vandalism, Byron's memoirs were burnt inits office in 1824.
And the literary links don't end there. Oscar Wilde was a member of the Albemarle Club and it was there in 1895 that the Marquess of Queensberry left his infamous 'For Oscar Wilde, posing as a somdomite' note that ultimately led the the magazine editor and writer being sent to Reading jail. Previously, Wilde had been editor of Lady's World magazine for Cassell's, relaunching it as Woman's World, from 1887-89.
Albemarle was made one of the first one-way streets because of the popularity of the Royal Institution and the Albemarle Club, which led to huge carriage jams.
To learn about almost 500 magazine covers and pages, look out for my book, A History of British Magazine Design, from the Victoria & Albert Museum, the world's leading museum of art and design
Tags:Albemarle Street, Lord Desborough, mayfair, Vanity Fair
Posted in 1910s, caricature, cartoons, collecting magazines, First World War, illustrators, magazine history, magazines, weekly magazines | Leave a Comment »
Leete's influence in Argentina via Flagg
Alfred Leete's First World War 'Kitchener Needs You' recruiting poster was copied by the US artist James Montgomery Flagg and that has continued in use as a symbol of Uncle Sam's imperialism in America. This picture from September 2014 shows Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner alongside a US judge, Thomas Griesa, depicted as Uncle Sam.
https://web.archive.org/web/20171221162209if_/http://ws-eu.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=GB&source=ac&ref=qf_sp_asin_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=magforumcom-21&marketplace=amazon&region=GB&placement=1910500364&asins=1910500364&linkId=&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=trueThe poster was seen in Buenos Aires during an international legal battle over the Argentine government's refusal to repay US hedge funds – regarded by their critics as financial 'vultures' – after the country had defaulted on its debt. The poster reads: 'Either you are with Cristina or you are with the Yankees – Vultures get out of Argentina'.
In the same way as Leete's image was first used as a magazine cover, for a September 1914 issue of London Opinion, Flagg, first sold his version to Leslie's Weekly magazine for a colour cover in 1917.
Tags:alfred leete, James Montgomery Flagg, Kitchener poster, propaganda, Uncle Sam
Posted in Alfred Leete, black and white artists, design, illustrators, Kitchener, magazine covers, notable covers, Your country needs you | Leave a Comment »
Magazine mastheads and typography
Hand-drawn title for Drawing magazine, June 1915
Hand-drawn title for Drawing magazine, October 1915
Hand-drawn title for Drawing magazine, February 1916
Nowadays, type and magazine title pieces – mastheads – are created by designers on computer screens but right into the 1990s, drawing unique lettering and fonts by hand was the standard way of doing things. It might have been cheaper to rely on Letraset rub-down lettering or manipulating photoset typefaces, but nothing could beat the typographer's pen and creativity for originality.
Until the 1960s and the dominance of photography for magazine covers, illustrators would often draw the lettering for each issue as part of the overall design. The three titles here scanned from different issues of Drawing date from 1915 and 1916, at the height of the first world war. At first glance, they may look the same, but take a closer look and you'll soon start to see the differences. The top one is damaged.
Take a look at theses online videos by typographer Davey Farey – whose work includes designing the Times, the Maxim masthead and Blackadder credits – to get a feel for the way it's done.
Tags:calligraphy, Drawing, magazines, masthead, typography
Posted in 1910s, British Magazine Design, design, illustrators, magazine cover design, magazine covers, magazine history, magazines, typography | Leave a Comment »
Comics, cartoonists and surrealists – this week's good reads
The TLS on comics and graphic novels
Martin Rowson seems to have become the voice of Britain's newspaper cartoonists – and he doesn't let his comrades down with 'Afflicting the comfortable', an article in The Times Literary Supplement. It's the highlight of last week's 'Cartoon times' issue.
Rowson is supported by Lucy Dallas's 'Groo! Yeuch! The Beano at 80', Kassia St Clair on graphics and politics, and Eric Bulson reviewing six books about comics and their spin-offs, including CUP's Cambridge Companion to the Graphic Novel.
Desmond Morris on the surrealists he knew
Next in my reading pile is The Lives of the Surrealists from Thames & Hudson. Desmond Morris – he of Zoo Time and Naked Ape fame – turns out to have been a surrealist painter himself and portrays the likes of Magritte, Moore and Miro through personal anecdote.
The book has some lovely lines. I particularly liked the chapter on Roland Penrose – who bankrolled the movement, founded the ICA and lived with Lee Miller. Other surrealists condemned him for selling out and joining the establishment when he accepted a knighthood in 1966. His reaction? 'They can call me a Sir-realist.'
To see almost 500 magazine covers and pages, look out for my book, A History of British Magazine Design, from the Victoria & Albert Museum, the world's leading museum of art and design
Tags:cartoonists, cartoons, Desmond Morris, graphoc novels, Martin Rowson, Roland Penrose, surrealists, The Beano
Posted in book, caricature, cartoons, collecting magazines, comics, illustrators, magazine history | Leave a Comment »
Artists, their signatures and monograms
Alfred Leete's monogram
Alfred Leete, creator of the Your Country Needs You poster of Kitchener, had a distinctive signature for his work, as did one of his artistic contemporaries, Lawson Wood, the creator of the Gran'pop chimpanzee character. Both were famous illustrators and in both cases, the signature evolved over time.
Richard 'Dicky' Doyle's monogram from Punch
Other illustrators and cartoonists used a monogram, a graphic device made up of their initials. A great example of this was the Punch illustrator Richard Doyle. He used a reversed R to share the upright of the D, with a bird on top to symbolise his nickname, Dicky Doyle. Monograms seem to have become less popular in the 20th century, but Simon House has a spread of Victorian examples in his book, The Dictionary of 19th Century British Book Illustrators.
Leete's and Wood's signatures are easy to make out, whereas Doyle's is a rebus. However, some cartoonists' signatures seem perverse in their illegibility – Gilbert Wilkinson being a prime example with his covers for Passing Show and Illustrated weekly magazines.
To help get my head round them all, I've started a page of signatures and monograms on Magforum with 100 examples. Another illegible example is East on a Health & Efficiency cover – pointers as to what it says or in identifying some others would be appreciated!
Illegible signature for part of 'East'
Tags:advertising, alfred leete, black and white artists, cartoon, Herbert Jenkins, James Taylor, Kitchener, Kitchener poster, lord kitchener, magazines, Martyn Thatcher, Pearson's magazine, Your Country Needs You
Posted in 1800s, 1900s, Alfred Leete, black and white artists, careers, cartoons, illustrators, Kitchener, magazine covers, magazine history, magazines, marketing, men's magazines, Odhams Press, Your country needs you | Leave a Comment »
What does a Bolshevik look like?
Portrait of a 'frenzied fanatic' Bolshevik by Charles Sargeant Jagger on the cover of War Illustrated in January 1919
War Illustrated magazine left its readers in no doubt where its stood on the prospects of Russia in the control of the Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution. This ranting maniac was portrayed on the weekly magazine's front cover for 11 January, 1919, by CS Jagger. Inside, Sir Sidney Low wrote about the revolutionaries as 'frenzied fanatics'.
I take this illustration to be by Charles Sargeant Jagger, one of the pre-eminent sculptors of the early 20th century. He served with the Artists' Rifles in the First World War and created several war memorials – most notably the Royal Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner (1925). There is a British Pathe film of Jagger at work.
Sir Sidney Low was a journalist during the war and edited the wireless service of the Ministry of Information. He had been knighted the year before.
War Illustrated's editor at Amalgamated Press was John Hammerton, one of Alfred Harmsworth's most successful editors. War Illustrated was relaunched as New Illustrated after the war.
Tags:Bolshevik, Charles Sargeant Jagger, first world war, Sir Sidney Low, war illustrated
Posted in 1910s, 1930s, Alfred Harmsworth, Amalgamated Press, art deco, design, First World War, illustrators, magazine covers, magazine history, magazines, notable covers, russia, weekly magazines | Leave a Comment »
Maurice Rickards: ephemera and magazines
Maurice Rickards merged two photographs in the dark room for this image manipulation cover on Man About Town in 1959
Maurice Rickards is one of the unsung heroes of graphic design. Although he wrote several books – and Michael Twyman completed his Encyclopedia of Ephemera – the godfather of modern-day ephemera is rarely written about. Even Wikipedia, that great hoover-upper of everybody else's research and websites, has yet to acknowledge his existence. Only the Independent gave him an obituary (by Patrick 'Book of Firsts' Robertson, a former chairman of the Ephemera Society who claims to own the largest private collection of vintage magazines in Britain).
Rickards trained as a photographer but collecting the fleeting printed objects of everyday life – particularly posters – was his joy and he appears to have made a living from his Fitzrovia basement studio as an illustrator, photographer and magazine designer. It was his enthusiasm that led to the creation of the Ephemera Society, its offshoot in the US and the Centre for Ephemera Studies at Reading University under the direction of Professor Twyman.
Maurice Rickards poster-style cover design for Man About Town (spring 1956)
I never met the man, but came to some idea of his approach to design through the pages of Man About Town under the editorship of John Taylor in the 1950s (before it was bought up by Michael Heseltine's Cornmarket). Later, when researching books about British magazine design and Alfred Leete's Kitchener poster, I discovered his books on posters.
The spring 1956 poster-like cover of Man About Town is credited to Rickards, as is autumn 1958, so he was probably working as a freelance designer on the magazine in those years. I particularly like the latter example, which is described as being inspired by the squiggle shape that he came across.
Maurice Rickards ephemera-inspired cover design for Man About Town (autumn 1958)
The autumn/winter i959 issue at the top of this post was the last Man About Town under Taylor and perhaps that is why it gives a big showing to Rickards' work. He had done several earlier covers designs but this one gives an opportunity for his 'crackpotography' ideas, along with a five-page article. The text reproduces some of his 'eccentricities' in 'Rickards's howdoneit', an article based on his book, Off-Beat Photography (The Studio, 1959), about image manipulation. In Man About Town's inimitable style, the magazine describes that the woman sitting on Rickards's head cover is easily explained:
It is not that we used a particularly small girl; it is merely that Rickards himself has such a big head.
Offbeat Photography by Maurice Richards shows Rickards with an axe in his head on the dust jacket
In the article, the captions explain how each photograph was composed and how shadows were added using an airbrush or avoided. A man shown balancing on a glass using just one finger needed 50 or 60 exposures before Rickards got it right. A skull and Luger photo was for a book, named as Skeleton Island. In fact, this looks to have become A Twist of Sand (1960) by Geoffrey Jenkins and was made into a film eight years later starring Richard Johnson and Honor Blackman. The cover used a variant of the photo, without the gun.
Another photograph of what looks like the aftermath of a massive road accident harks back to a poster campaign he did right at the start of his career in 1953 – Lives Matter. Three posters were commissioned by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, showing a woman collapsed over a telephone, a one-legged boy on crutches, and a little girl in the arms of a policeman. According to Patrick Robertson's obituary, such was the horror they generated that they were banned by various local authorities, were defaced on hoardings and prompted 'harsh letters' to editors and MPs.
Tags:ephemera, ephemera society, man about town, Maurice Rickards
Posted in 1950s, collecting magazines, illustrators, magazine cover design, magazine covers, magazine history, magazines, men's magazines, notable covers | Leave a Comment »
Punch magazine's horn of plenty
Morten Morland cartoon from The Times newspaper showing Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell with his mouth depicted as a Punch-style horn of plenty
The Times this week ran a Morten Morland cartoon showing Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell with his mouth depicted as a horn of plenty – a cornucopia. This is a reference to an idea that goes back a couple of thousand years to Greek mythology. But it is a classical allusion that was very much kept alive by Richard 'Dicky' Doyle with his famous Punch magazine cover design that developed from 1844.
The horn of plenty from the left side of an 1847 Punch cover
Buyers of Punch – just 6,000 of them each week in the satirical magazine's early days – are the sort of people who will have had a classical education and so would be aware of the idea of a goat's horn or horn-shaped basket overflowing with produce. It's associated with Zeus, Hades, Hercules and Gaia.
In the case of McDonnell, he's spouting forth a stream of policies at the Labour party conference; for Dicky Doyle in 1842, it was a cornucopia of fun, wit and entertainment.
The Punch cover is often described as never-changing, but that it not the case. The earliest issues from July 1841 showed a Punch and Judy stall. That idea stayed in place until the 20-year-old Doyle's Mr Punch and his dog design took hold in April 1844. And there were several versions of that, though the main elements, full of classical references, stayed constant.
RGG Price's History of Punch (Collins, 1957) states the frieze at the bottom was based on Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne. What appear to be the words 'Exhaustive wit' exude from the horn on the right, and 'fun' on the left. It is 'satire' that is raised up towards the heavens on the right among a multitude of mischievous imps, fairies and cherubs.
The cover of Punch magazine's almanac of 1842 by Halbot K Browne ('Phiz')
This 1842 almanac cover is initialled HKB – Halbot K Browne – 'Phiz'. He was one of five artists who did early covers for Punch (the others being Archibald Henning, William Harvey, John Gilbert and Kenny Meadows).
The engraver is also credited, Ebenezer Landells. He was one of the founders in 1841 of Punch, and acted as art editor, along with the journalist Henry Mayhew and William Last as printer. This almanac sold very well and may have saved the magazine from closure, because sales had been running at 6,000 a week whereas they needed to sell 10,000.
However, the financial problems led Last to pull out in favour of working with Herbert Ingram on Illustrated London News. Landells had to sell his share to Bradbury & Evans, the publishers. Bradbury & Evans replaced Landells with Joseph Swain and gained complete control in December 1842. Swain was not credited on the covers.
Although Doyle's design won out in 1844, it took five years to settle down into the image that lasted until 1956, when one-off colour covers by the likes of Ronald Searle became the norm. In particular, the detail of Mr Punch in the bottom frieze was altered in response to criticism that it was crude, a drawing of a British lion replaces the Punch stall on the easel and the circus typeface for the title was turned to wood, in a mockery of the German illustration style of artists such as Alfred Rethel.
Tags:cornucopia, Dicky Doyle, horn of plenty, magazine cover, Phiz, Punch magazine
Posted in 1800s, caricature, cartoons, illustrators, magazine cover design, magazine covers, magazine history, magazines, notable covers, satirical magazine | Leave a Comment »
On this day in magazines: Punch and Thatcher in 1977
How Trog portrayed Thatcher for Punch in 1977 (February 23)
'Trog' – Willy Fawkes – was a prolific cartoonist and did several Margaret Thatcher caricatures for Punch. This 1977 cover illustrated an article entitled, 'What to do about the baby shortage'. The Conservative Party leader would not became prime minister for another two years. Here, she is portrayed as pregnant in the pose made famous by Alfred Leete in the 'Your Country Needs You' image of Lord Kitchener.
Thatcher had been a member of parliament since 1959 and became Edward Heath's education secretary in 1970, a post she held for four years until the Tories lost power. She replaced Heath to become leader of the opposition and in 1979 won the first of her three premierships, losing the party leadership to John Major in 1990. Next are two more Thatcher depictions by Trog, all also before she became PM.
Trog turns to Dickens for inspiration in this Thatcher caricature from 20 July 1971 for Punch
In 1971, Trog had turned to Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist for inspiration, a serial first published in Bentley's Miscellany magazine in 1837, with a George Cruikshank engraving of the above scene. The Punch cartoon has Thatcher in the role of Mr Bumble, the workhouse beadle, taking umbrage at Oliver asking for more gruel. She was education secretary at this time and cut spending. In 1974, and caused a furore and was nicknamed 'Thatcher the milk snatcher' for ending the practice of primary schoolchildren being given a small bottle of milk each day.
Thatcher finds the grass is greener as a hippy! Trog for Punch in 1975
The idea of Thatcher as a spliff-smoking, guitar-strumming hippy is the sort of thing that would have to come from a cartoonist like Trog. The Punch cover is from October 8, 1975, a year after she had replaced Edward Heath as leader of the Conservative Party.
Tags:artist, illustration, magazines, Margaret Thatcher, Punch, Trog, Wally Fawkes
Posted in 1970s, Alfred Leete, caricature, cartoons, collecting magazines, illustrators, Kitchener, magazine cover design, magazine covers, magazine history, magazines, notable covers, satirical magazine, weekly magazines, Your country needs you | Leave a Comment »
This month in magazines: Oz in 1967
The first issue of underground magazine Oz in February 1967
Oz was an underground magazine launched in London in February 1967 that became a leading part of Britain's counterculture. Notice the word 'London' at the top left of the Oz title above. It's there because Oz was originally an Australian magazine, founded by Richard Neville, Martin Sharp and Richard Walsh. They were prosecuted in Australia and Neville and Sharp came to London, where they launched another version of the magazine with Jim Anderson.
It was not the only magazine of its type – International Times, Ink and Friends were also influential – but Oz gained mainstream notoriety for the obscenity trial that followed the publication of the Oz School Kids issue (number 28).
The Oz Schoolkids issue
The three editors (Sharp had left and been replaced by Felix Dennis) selected a group of youngsters aged between 14 and 18 to edit issue 28. The magazine's offices were raided by the Obscene Publications Squad, the issue was seized and the editors were charged with conspiring to 'debauch and corrupt the morals of young children' because of some of the cartoons and discussion of sexual freedom and drug use.
Protest issue at Oz obscenity trial
For Felix Dennis, the Oz trial was the 'finest hour' for John Mortimer, their defence lawyer and later author of the Rumpole of the Bailey TV series and books. Although they were found guilty under the Obscene Publications Act, the verdict was overturned on appeal.
Like Private Eye, Oz might have looked crude, but it was an innovative user of the latest production techniques such as lithographic colour printing. It produced some amazing imagery by people such as Peter Brooke – now the leading political cartoonist on The Times – and Sharp's iconic imagine of Bob Dylan, the Tambourine Man.
Another Australian who worked on Oz, in Sydney and London, was Marsha Rowe, and Germaine Greer wrote for it, too. Greer wrote The Female Eunuch in 1970 (and was gardening correspondent of Private Eye with the byline Rose Blight!) and Rowe was a co-founder of Spare Rib in 1972. She condemned a plan by Charlotte Raven to relaunch Spare Rib in 2014. The archive of Spare Rib can be found through the British Library's website.
Felix Dennis went on to found Dennis Publishing, which launched Maxim and The Week. Since Dennis's death, the profits from the company have been put to creating a massive forest. As well as the people behind Oz becoming mainstream, so have many of the ideas it, and the other undergrounds titles, argued for. Oz is also one of the most collectable magazines.
The last issue of Oz
The University of Woollongong holds an online archive of the Australian issues of Oz, which was first published in Sydney on April Fool's Day 1963 and continued until December 1969.This was set up with Neville's co-operation after he returned to Australia and became a writer.
Woollongong also has all the London editions of Oz, from February 1967 to November 1973. The last issue cover carries a photo of the Oz staff naked overlaid on a background of disgraced US president Richard Nixon.
Tags:counterculture, Felix dennis, magazine, martin Sharp, oz, Richard neville, underground
Posted in 1960s, censorship, collecting magazines, design, first issues, illustrators, magazine cover design, magazine covers, magazine history, magazine prices, magazines, notable covers, printing, satirical magazine | Leave a Comment »
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José Ferrer as Cyrano de Bergerac on this Everybody's magazine cover from 10 October 1951. The design has a 3D effect, with the nose appearing to stand proud of the page
Cover of BOAC's inflight magazine Welcome Aboard in 1970
Weekly Illustrated magazine pioneered photojournalism (3 March 1936)
This logo from the Daily Mail echoes the original masthead for Answers Magazine
The Penny Magazine shows itself being sold from what looks like a railway station stall in 1904
The first issue cover of John Bull from 1 April 1903
Germany's leader, Kaiser Wilhelm, with his flamboyant moustache and military uniform, at the start of World War I. He is described as 'The Ravager'
Racy illustration by Oldham for the weekly magazine Woman
One of Miss Fish's drawings of Eve, from the popular Tatler column
Diana Rigg as The Avengers' Mrs Peel on the cover of TV World in 1965
Blighty pin-up cover for the popular men's weekly by MB Tompkins in 1958 (16 August)
Winnie the Pooh appeared exclusively in colour in six 1928 issues of Home Chat
Tom Browne's drawing shoe incredible attention to detail; he could do so much with so little
Margaret Banks drew this charmer for Home Chat magazine in 1938. Note the baby is wearing reins
Racy French weekly Vie Parisienne from 1926
FHM June 2004. But what's happened to the nipples on Abi Titmuss?
An in-your-face spread from Loaded in May 1995
Kate Moss in Corinne Day photograph on cover of the Face in July 1990
Popular Flying in 1934 when it was edited by Biggles creator WE Johns
Cute cover-up: Naomi Campbell on the cover of GQ in April 2000
Acorn User magazine cover from December 1982. This issue would have been edited from the Bedford Square offices
Opening of 5-page article on the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey with sketches by Clive Arrowsmith in Town magazine
The first issue cover for Carlos, an inflight magazine for Virgin in 2003
Je Suis Charlie – Charlie Hebdo's website after the murderous attack on its Paris office
This 1946 holiday season cover from John Bull forecasts a web fate for the slumbering gent
Anna Wintour was told this Madonna cover would not sell
Debbie Harry and Blondie on the first issue cover of Smash Hits from November 1978
Strand magazine front cover from March 1891 by George Charles Haité
'Mother Christmas' cover for Needlewoman magazine from December 1925
Ronald Searle's cartoon glossary to printers' jargon
Last issue of Rupert Murdoch's Today newspaper (17 November 1995)
New Illustrated starts to change its name to Record Weekly in 1920 (January 17 issue)
Detail of Helena Christiansen's face from the Vogue cover
The glossy monthly Queen occupied the old Tit-Bits office in 1947
The Observer Magazine cover shows Alexei Sayle as the Hitler diaries forger in the 1991 TV series Selling Hitler
Evil victim: Diana Rigg on the cover of the Sunday Times Magazine, 28 February 1982
A whacky contrast in all senses of the word from the previous week
Beautiful Britons glamour magazine first issue cover from November 1955
Home Chat cover from 19 September 1914 with a front cover story about supporting the Queen's Guild, which had been set up as a way for women to back the war effort
John Gwynn's poem 'A Death Mask' in the Strand magazine appears to have been inspired by a drowned woman in Paris
New Statesman 1993 jan 29 John Major Clare Latimer
Woman's Fair from January 1940 filled with content from the US, including a Jon Whitcomb cover illustration
A colour cover for Crusoe magazine of January 1925
This cat with its amazing, lip-licking tongue is from a Whiskas advert of 1964
Woman's Own liked clean cover designs in the 1930s with few cover lines – but notice Ursula Bloom promoted her for a special article (30 July 1938)
Look, spring 2009
Leader magazine led the world in putting Marilyn Monroe on its cover in April 1946
Marion Jean Lyon in 1923
Marc Jacobs 2014 Playboy special issue in perspex box
Chilprufe advert from Queen magazine in 1961
Madonna cover from i-D dated March/April 1984
The first Sunday Times colour section from 4 February 1962 (though the cover is not dated)
HMS Queen Elizabeth super dreadnought by Harry Hudson Rodmell on the cover of New Illustrated magazine (18 October 1919)
Adrian Flowers took this Nova cover (July 1971)
A different look for the cover of Smash Hits, also in February 1984
This is the cover for the relaunch of Woman's Own in 1937 as a colour weekly. Note this is a true self referential cover because the woman is holding a copy of the magazine she appears on!
The first Daleks cover for Radio Times in November 1964
Bovril advert of Hercules fighting a lion by Stanley Berkeley from Young Gentlewoman magazine of 1892
Home Chat, a leading women's popular weekly, from 14 May
Madonna rides again on the cover of Cosmopolitan with its May 2015 issue
Raphael Sabatini's Captain Blood brought to visual life on the cover of Pearson's Magazine (1930) by Joseph Greenup
Front cover title from Woman's Own from 19 May 1955
Mussolini writes for the right-wing Britannia magazine in 1927
Billy Fury? James Dean?
The Kitchener poster shown in the third part of the Great War partwork in 1933
Peter Hack-Brookes cover for Oz from September 1971 – a copy from a US magazine cover by Peter Driben from 1949
John Bull in 1917 – the magazine was used as a promotional tool for Horatio Bottomley's financial schemes
A letterpress flyer for the latest serial in Pictorial Magazine – could this 1902 image have sparked Alfred Leete's imagination?
Madonna on the front cover of Cosmopolitan magazine in the US for May 1990
Karl Marx as the Uncle Sam derivative of Kitchener
The pointing man from an advert in London Opinion magazine, 17 September 1910
53 Bedford Square in London's Bloomsbury. This Georgian building is up for sale at £12 million
The return of the Daleks to Dr Who in 2005 sparked this gatefold cover for the Radio Times
Kate Greenaway painting called 'Darby and Joan' on Illustrated London News – or is this a pair of radical printers?
'K of K' – Kitchener of Khartoum – caricature by Will Scott on the cover of Drawing magazine in February 1916
Girl Illustrated front cover with Dr Who girl Katy Manning and a Dalek
Cover of Le Petit Journal of 25 June 1916
Lilian Hocknell artwork revived for Christmas 2014 Vintage View from Woman's Weekly magazine cover
A Heartfield montage on the cover of Picture Post dated 9 September 1939
Marilyn Monroe on the cover of Blighty from 1956
Vivian Blaine from the London stage adaption of the musical Guys and Dolls on the cover of Picture Post in 1953
Town magazine and the`Girl in Red Water up to her Charlies' cover from September 1965
Tatler magazine's front cover in 1901
Eddie Hapgood, the England and Arsenal captain, on the cover of Weekly Illustrated in 1934 with his son, Tony


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text:
ArtThrob
Where We're Going
Kiluanji Kia Henda, The Last Journey of the Dictator Mussunda N'Zombo Before the Great Extinction (Act V), 2017.
Resin and Wonder: Kiluanji Kia Henda's 'In the Days of a Dark Safari'
Kiluanji Kia Henda
By Tim Leibbrandt
Goodman Gallery, Cape Town
07.10 – 18.11.2017
It's no fluke that Kiluanji Kia Henda was the recent recipient of the 2017 Frieze Artist Award. There aren't many artists quite so adept at balancing complex investigations into African modernity and postcolonialism with such a wry and acerbic wit. Usually centred on the artist's home country of Angola, Kia Henda's inquiries are multifaceted and considered from a variety of perspectives, traits best encapsulated by previous pieces such as Balumuka (Ambush), Icarus 13, and the phenomenal video Concrete Affection – Zopo Lady.
While leaving it to the viewer to draw certain conclusions from the rounded and informed discussions that his exhibitions present, it never feels like Kia Henda is passing the buck or eschewing a position. Put another way, he is particularly adept at nailing that elusive Barthesian idea of a writerly text (i.e. one that is completed by the viewer/reader's understanding of the work) in a meaningful, insightful and frequently entertaining way.
Kiluanji Kia Henda, In the Days of a Dark Safari #1, 2017. Inkjet print on cotton paper, 93 x 140 cm
With 'In the Days of a Dark Safari', Kia Henda turns his focus towards the dual ideas of colonialism and African dictatorships and how these converge on projections of Africa as 'dark continent' and 'paradise lost' respectively. The exhibition is divided between two photographic series and a video work, the latter of which functions as the exhibition's cipher.
The twin photography series outline the exhibition's fundamental positions. In the Days of a Dark Safari depicts various museological taxidermy animal dioramas, with the critters covered in black shrouds. Equal parts absurdist and apocalyptic, the shrouds serve to draw attention to the staged theatricality of the dioramas. They are visual riffs on the colonial idea of darkness as per Joseph Conrad: an othering agent which allows separation, distance and a sense of moral justification for all manner of imposed douchebaggery.
The Last Journey of the Dictator Mussunda N'Zombo Before the Great Extinction is Kia Henda's critique on the further devastating effects of African dictatorships. In particular, their tendency towards raising the spectre of colonial legacies to account for their failure to restore an Edenic pre-colonial beforetime. Parodying Mobutu Sese Seko's penchant for donning leopard skin hats (read here as a signifier of ties to this fabled Eden), Kia Henda's dictator is all bling, pomp and posturing. Cane in tow, he ostentatiously parades the dioramas searching offhandedly for Paradise Lost.
Kiluanji Kia Henda, The Last Journey of the Dictator Mussunda N'Zombo Before the Great
Extinction (Act II), 2017. Inkjet print on cotton paper, 150 x 225 cm
At times threatening to veer into territory well-trodden by Kudzanai Chiurai's Cabinet series in 2009, there is a sequential narrative that emerges throughout the photographs, culminating in Act V of the Last Journey series. Here both streams are conceptually vanquished pointing to the possibility of an ideal decolonial era: both the shroud of darkness and the Dictator Mussunda N'Zombo lie perished, mocked by a nearby antelope. Perhaps this is the great extinction to which the title alludes?
The decision to print the Last Journey series at 150 x 225 cm wasn't such a hot call. Presumably intended to maximize their impact (and selling price) they are noticeably stretched beyond the limits of their resolution and are chock full of pixellation artefacts. The Dark Safari series are printed at a more modest 93 x 140 cm and appear just dandy. Ultimately, both photographic series are lite and witty (and perhaps a bit repetitive), and are elevated and activated by the exceptional video work Havemos de Voltar (We Shall Return).
The significance of the taxidermy becomes fully apparent in the video: both the preservation of historical moments and the embalming of animals require that you kill it, drain the blood and replace all viscera with synthetic resin dummies that preserve the surface by eschewing the living organism inside. The result no longer contains a soul but marks a 'demented desire to keep the past alive' (to quote the video's narrator).
Kiluanji Kia Henda, Havemos de Voltar (We Shall Return) [Film Still], 2017. Single-channel film, duration: 17'30"
We Shall Return tells the story of Amélia Capomba, a taxidermy sable antelope housed in the halls of an Archive Centre. Dreaming of the forest that lies beyond its dreary walls, Amélia longs for reanimation and escape. She is venerated daily by the museum's curator Mr Baltazar but is also the object of desire for Daniel Jianping, a Chinese businessman who wants to buy her as a decoration for the new nightclub which he has invested in. Her fate becomes tugged between soulless preservation in the purgatory of the Archive Centre or recontextualising as curiosity décor for foreign interests. Amélia of course has other plans involving an escape through a time machine (leading to a truly memorable sequence in the video).
Given these links to time-travel, taxidermy and decontextualized memories, the opportunity to read We Shall Return through the lens of Chris Marker's seminal 1962 science fiction short film La Jetée is irresistible. As a courtesy, spoilers for both Kia Henda's film and La Jetée follow.
Set in a radiation-drenched, post-apocalyptic future Paris, La Jetée's nameless protagonist is a prisoner obsessed with his childhood recollection of a woman's face – and possibly of a man's death – on a jetty in Paris. It is this vivid memory which leads the scientists in the film to believe that he may be able to travel in time in order to change the past and alter their present. The narrative is spread between a beforetime (the peaceful Paris of the jetty memory), a cataclysmic event (World War III), and the shattered aftertime (Paris the irradiated wasteland).
Chris Marker, La Jetée [Film Still], 1962.
Successfully time travelling on a number of occasions, La Jetée's protagonist decides that he wishes only to remain in the past, escaping one last time to the jetty from his memory. In the film's conclusion, he is assassinated by fascist figures from the future (who have learned time travel from him). In his dying moments, he realizes that the man he saw being shot as a child was in fact his adult self being punished for his insubordination. Marker's multi-layered film is fundamentally a cautionary allegory of how unreliable and destructive idealized memories can be.
These concerns are instructive in accessing the events depicted in Kia Henda's video (and account for the wry reference to Agostinho Neto's titular poem in the video's title). Trapped in the purgatory of the Archive Centre, Amélia the antelope longs for her recollections of a thriving prior-existence in the forest. When she manages to return to the real forest, she is almost immediately shot and presumably returned to the Archive Centre. For both characters, the return to their significant moment comes with the realization that it is in fact the moment of their death, creating a perpetual time-loop. Their nostalgic desire to return to this memory ultimately leads to the severing of their future.
By incorporating these themes through the video, Kiluanji Kia Henda asserts the devastating effects of longing for decontextualised dead memories, and how this is exploited by the agendas of the colonial, dictatorial and nationalist figures in his photography. Overlaying these complex narratives in an effortlessly accessible and enjoyably absurd presentation, 'In the Days of a Dark Safari' turns a incisive critical eye to the volatile muddles of the present with an optimistic glimpse towards a brighter decolonised future.
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Filed Under: insight_, photography, Review Tagged With: Chris Marker, Goodman Gallery, Kiluanji Kia Henda, La Jetee
Identification and Deconstruction: Mikhael Subotzky's 'Massive Nerve Corpus'
One Hasty Day: National Arts Festival 2019
Decapitating Discourse: MJ Turpin's 'take me apart.'
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Yup, it's looking that way. Microsoft is recommending that you RDP into the server you want to manage. You can read more here.
Do You Really Want To Upgrade To MS SoftGrid SP1?
After reviewing some of the release notes it looks like there are all sorts of issues with SP1. The only good thing it does is support public assemblies which is what Microsoft Office 2007 uses. This functionality is in the SP1 for the sequencer.
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I'm heading to Tech Ed 2007 tomorrow. Hope to see you there.


text:
2005 ISR Awards honor Adomaitis, Nesgarani,...
2005 ISR Awards honor Adomaitis, Nesgarani, Briggs
Winners of the 2005 ISR outstanding awards (l-r): Ray Adomaitis, faculty; Nima Mesgarani, graduate student; Frank Briggs, staff. ISR director Eyad Abed presented the awards.
ISR held its annual awards ceremony on May 19. Congratulations to the winners!
Ray Adomaitis (ChE/ISR). Ray is among the very best engineers in the country in modeling and simulation for semiconductor manufacturing processes. He is also known as an excellent team player who is dedicated to his teaching and to service to the university.
The George Harhalakis Outstanding Systems Engineering Graduate Student Award was presented to Nima Mesgarani. He was nominated by Professor Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR), who noted that researchers around the world are impressed with Nima and his insights.
The Outstanding Staff Award was given to Payroll Coordinator Frank Briggs. Frank is a two-time recipient of the award, having also won it in 1992. Frank manages one of the most challenging and complicated payrolls in the university, and does so with commitment, efficiency and accuracy.


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Sally Field is a film and television actress and director. Throughout her career that has totaled more than five decades, she has won two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award, among numerous other accolades.
Field began her career in television, starring on the sitcoms Gidget from 1965 to 1966 and The Flying Nun from 1967 to 1970. After numerous other television roles, Field ventured into film, starring in Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and later Norma Rae (1979), for which she received universal acclaim, receiving the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. She later received Golden Globe Award nominations for her performances in Absence of Malice (1981) and Kiss Me Goodbye (1982), before receiving her second Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Places in the Heart (1984). Field received further nominations for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for Murphy's Romance (1985) and Steel Magnolias (1989).
In the 1990s, Field appeared in a wide range of films, including Not Without My Daughter (1991) and Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), before being nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Forrest Gump (1994). In the 2000s, Field returned to television with a recurring role as Maggie Wyczenski on the NBC medical drama ER, for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series in 2001. From 2006 to 2011, she portrayed the lead role of Nora Walker on the ABC television drama Brothers & Sisters, for which she won the 2007 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Field later starred as Mary Todd Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, among other accolades. She also appeared as Aunt May in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and reprised the role in the 2014 sequel, The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
I just finished "In Pieces" and I am just overwhelmed by Sally Field's life story. It reminded me very much of the often contentious relationship I had with my mother especially the epilogue. Like Ms. Field, my mother had to live with me and went through hospice care and I was there holding her hand as she took her last breath when she died on my birthday. I found myself sobbing uncontrollably not only for my own loss but for Sally's as well. It is such a great read-although painful in parts. I'm so glad she chose to pull the emotional scab off that wound for the world to see. I have a greater understanding of what makes her such a brilliant actor.


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The Sadrist Movement – named after prominent clerics from the al-Sadr family – emerged in Iraq in the 1990s amid the Shia Muslim uprising against President Saddam Hussein after his defeat in the Gulf War. A product of decades of suppression of the Shia population under the Sunni-led Baath Party, the revolt was violently crushed by Saddam. The US invasion of 2003 and the overthrow of Saddam resulted in the formation of the anti-US Mahdi Army, the Sadrist Movement's militia wing. The Sadrists, however, set violence aside when they participated in the general election of 2005 as part of a wider coalition of Shia parties. The Mahdi Army was disbanded in 2008, only to be revived as the Peace Companies around 2014 to fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Sunni militant jihadist group. Since 2003, the Sadrist Movement – in its militant and political incarnations – has been led by Muqtada al-Sadr, whose persona and public statements are often imbued with messianism and millenarianism.
Although Shias constitute no more than 15 per cent of the global population of Muslims, they form the majority or a significant minority in some countries. Shias constitute 90 to 95 per cent of the total Muslim population in Iran (which is 99.4 per cent Muslim) and around 65 per cent in Iraq (96.4 per cent Muslim). Historically, Shia communities and clerics tended to congregate in areas where the authority of the Sunni-led Caliphate was weak. Shia ulama (religious scholars) also found a foothold in territories under the rule of Shia dynasties, such as the Buyids (who ruled Baghdad between 945 and 1055) and the Safavids (1501-1722) who made Shiism Iran's state religion (Louer, 2012: 6–7).
There are three main branches of Shiism, based on their belief about the legitimacy of particular individual imams (spiritual-political leaders who succeeded the Prophet Muhammad). The Fivers believe in the legitimacy of Zayd ibn Ali (d. 740) as the fifth imam, as opposed to Muhammad al-Baqir (d. 733) – which is why they are also known as Zaydis. The Seveners, also known as Ismailis, believe that the imamate passed to Ismail ibn Jafar (d. 762) as opposed to Musa al-Kazim (d. 799). The vast majority of Shias are Twelvers, or Ithna Ashari, who believe that the imamate continued until the twelfth imam, Muhammad al-Muntazar, also known as the Hidden Imam, went into occultation. They believe that he will return one day as the Mahdi (a messianic figure) to lead the forces of good against evil in one final apocalyptic battle in which the Imam's enemies will be vanquished (Momen, 1985).
Distribution of Muslim schools of jurisprudence. Source: ©Peaceworld111.
The majority of contemporary Shia political movements were founded and led by clerics, even though some anti-clerical strands do exist. The establishment of the Iraqi nation-state in 1921, in particular, significantly transformed the nature of Shia religious institutions (Louer 2012: 10). Forming an alliance with tribal chiefs, Shia ulama raised an army and led a revolt to drive the British out of Mesopotamia. The ulama were unsuccessful and many were cast out by the British instead, which fragmented the centres of Shia religious authority. Many fled Najaf in Iraq – the centre of Shiism's most prestigious seminaries – to settle in Qom in Iran. In the 1960s, the socialist, Sunni-dominated but nominally secular Baath Party took power and started suppressing Shia religious institutions. This, and the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, contributed to the rise of Qom as the principal centre for clerical training. Qom became the Shia world's scholarly centre while Najaf remained its centre of religious authority (Louer 2012: 11).
Against this background, clerics from the al-Sadr family were pivotal in the development of political Shiism. Muhammad al-Sadr played a central role in the 1920 revolution and served as prime minister of Iraq in 1948. In the late 1950s, Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr was a key figure in the establishment of the Shia world's first contemporary political party, al-Dawa, in Najaf. In Lebanon in the 1960s, Musa al-Sadr's Movement of the Deprived reinterpreted some core Shia rituals, which were suffused with fatalism, into expressions of political rebellion (Louer 2012: 12, 15).
Shia political movements were often violently suppressed in Sunni-led regimes. The Iraqi Baathist administration was particularly vicious in the 1970s, resulting in movements like al-Dawa becoming more militant. Saddam's forces routinely arrested thousands of al-Dawa members and executed hundreds – Baqir al-Sadr was put to death in 1980 (Cockburn 2008: 40–43). Musa al-Sadr 'vanished' while travelling in Libya in 1978 – he was probably murdered by the regime of Muammar al-Gaddafi (Louer 2012: 47). The circumstances of Musa's disappearance aroused messianic and millenarian sentiments amongst his followers, who drew parallels between this incident and the Twelver Shia belief in the occultation of the Hidden Imam.
The Iranian revolution triggered a seismic shift in the geopolitics of the Middle East. Sunni-led Arab regimes worried about a potential domino effect while the new Iranian leadership made no secret of its desire to export the revolution (Louer 2012: 51). For example, in 1982, Iran set up Hezbollah (the Party of God) to oppose US and Israeli forces in the midst of the Lebanese civil war. In the same year, Iran also initiated the formation of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) – now known as the Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq (Louer 2012: 65). Some Shia factions from Iraq also actively began to support the new Iranian regime of their own accord, such as the followers of Mohammed Shirazi (Louer 2012: 52). However, Shirazi eventually became disillusioned with the regime's brutal crackdown of "counter-revolutionaries" (Louer 2012: 72). On a wider level, Shia political movements became polarised between those that supported Iran and its mode of government and those that rejected it.
After Saddam declared war on Iran in 1980, the Baathists crushed Shia movements even more violently, which only cemented Iran's status as the centre of global Shiism. Yet despite the sectarian nature of the war, the Iraqi army – composed mainly of Shias – did not mutiny en masse, suggesting that many Iraqi Shia fighters put national loyalty before sectarian identity (Cockburn 2008: 46). During the war, Saddam was supported by the US, the Soviet Union, Western European powers and most of the Arab world (except Syria).
When it ended in 1988, the war had devastated both countries. However, while Iran began adopting a more circumspect and pragmatic foreign policy, Iraq continued being selectively aggressive towards its neighbours. In 1990, an escalating border dispute about an oil field led to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in a war that was also driven by Iraq's historical claims over the region (BBC 1990). The Iraqi army's defeat in 1991 was swiftly followed by a Shia uprising within the country – the Shaaban Intifada (Cockburn 2008: 55). Shaaban is the Muslim month during which Twelver Shias celebrate the anniversary of the Mahdi's birth.
Saddam quickly crushed the uprising and, in 1992, installed Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr – a distant cousin of Baqir's (who had been executed in 1980) – as the leader of the Shia community. Although he appeared to cooperate with Saddam's regime after 1992, Sadiq had a history of openly criticising quietist and pacifist Shia clerics in the 1980s and was imprisoned alongside other vocal clerics during the 1991 uprising. Meanwhile, US sanctions imposed after 1990 impoverished Iraq and hit its Shia population especially badly. Under these conditions, Sadiq's leadership became more appealing, especially to disgruntled Shia youth, thus marking the growth of the Sadrist Movement.
From 1997, Sadiq's preaching became increasingly confrontational and the regime began restricting his activities (Cockburn 2008: 88). Secret intelligence officers infiltrated his religious circle. Yet his Shia opponents accused him of being a pro-regime collaborator, even after he and his two elder sons were ambushed and killed by security forces in Najaf in 1999. The leadership of the Sadrist Movement eventually fell to Sadiq's fourth son, Muqtada, who was 25 when his father and elder brothers were assassinated.
After 2003, Muqtada's influence grew exponentially, especially in the wake of intra-Shia rivalries unleashed by the US military invasion and the downfall of Saddam. Muqtada established his base in the Baghdad suburb of Al-Thawra or Saddam City, which he renamed Sadr City in honour of his father (Cockburn 2008: 112). Muqtada was scathing about Shia leaders who had collaborated with the former regime or with Iran, and was deeply opposed to the US occupation of Iraq. In being both anti-US and ambivalent about Iran, Muqtada's Sadrist Movement was therefore unique amongst other Iraqi Shia movements, which were less overtly anti-US and often warmer towards Iran. Muqtada formed the Mahdi Army, a militia which launched an anti-US insurrection in 2004. US forces managed to contain the insurrection and Muqtada suffered heavy military losses (Louer 2012: 92).
Sadr City just before the December 2005 election. Source: US Army Public Domain.
Muqtada then abandoned violence and regained national influence via the political process. The Sadrist Movement became a key partner in the Shia coalition – the United Iraqi Alliance – that contested the 2005 general election. The UIA was victorious, and the Sadrists gained more than 10 per cent of seats in parliament and control over the transportation and health ministries (Godwin 2012: 448). However, when sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shias flared up in 2006, Muqtada reactivated the Mahdi Army. In response to the Sunni insurgency, President George W Bush increased the number of US troops in Iraq in 2007, which also undermined the Mahdi Army's influence yet again. Muqtada then announced a ceasefire and retreated to Qom in Iran to pursue further religious education.
The Mahdi Army was officially disbanded in 2008. In 2010, Muqtada called on his supporters to participate in the general election and to back candidates who were calling for a complete withdrawal of US troops. In 2011, Muqtada returned to Najaf but then announced his exit from politics in 2014 (Plebani 2014: 7). Later that year, he revived the Mahdi Army under a different name – the Peace Companies – to fight against ISIS, the Sunni jihadist militia. In 2016, Muqtada led mass protests against the administration of Haider al-Abadi, the Iraqi prime minister since 2014, accusing the government of corruption and failing to carry out crucial reforms (Arraf 2016).
Underneath its political pragmatism and militant tendencies, the Sadrist Movement draws upon and innovates the basic narrative in Islam about the end times, common to both Sunni and Shia traditions. Basically, amid a period of turmoil and violence, a messianic figure called the Mahdi will appear. A war between Muslims and unbelievers will ensue that will also unleash the Dajjal. The Dajjal will be victorious but will eventually be defeated by Jesus – who did not die on the cross but was taken up to Heaven and will return – with the help of the Mahdi. The hordes of Yajuj and Majuj (Gog and Magog) will then attack but Jesus will vanquish them, too. He will then reign as caliph and a period of unprecedented prosperity will follow when the world will turn to Islam. Jesus and the Mahdi will then die natural deaths, followed by a final period of chaos before the end of the world (Beattie 2013: 92).
Details of the exact timings and locations for these events remain ambiguous, however, and have been subjected to different sectarian interpretations throughout Islamic history. Shia traditions have especially emphasised apocalyptic and millenarian beliefs about the return of the Hidden Imam as the Mahdi (Filiu 2011: 141). When in power, however, Shia authorities have historically tried to discourage messianic speculation amongst the general population because of its destabilising potential. This has not prevented periodic outbreaks of messianism amongst Shias which, in the twentieth century, took on increasingly political dimensions.
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the US-led invasion of Iraq catalysed new expressions of apocalypticism, millenarianism and messianism amongst Sunnis and Shias in the Middle East. In political Shiism, especially, these beliefs were not only directed at foreign or Sunni opponents, but also reflected intra-Shia tensions between quietists and militants and their conflicting geopolitical loyalties within the region.
The Sadrist Movement, like so many other contemporary Shia political groupings, draws upon some core beliefs and historical turning points in Shiism.
Shiism itself began as a political movement that gradually developed its own doctrines and practices that set it apart from the Sunni majority in the Muslim world. In brief, the Shias are those who believed that the Prophet Muhammad's leadership should have gone to his cousin and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, and his descendants. Those who accepted the succession of Muhammad's companions and upheld the majoritarian leadership of the Muslim community became known as Sunnis.
After Muhammad's death, the religious and political leadership of the nascent Muslim community was taken over by four of his companions in succession. In Sunnism, they are commonly referred to as the Khulafa Rashidun (Rightly Guided Caliphs) – Abu Bakr (r. 632-634), Umar (r. 634-644), Uthman (r. 644-656) and Ali (r. 656-661). Early Muslim sources note that Uthman's rule was marked by nepotism in favour of his relatives, the Umayyads. After he was assassinated, Ali took on the leadership of the community, albeit reluctantly, amid staunch opposition from the Umayyads.
After Ali was assassinated in 661, the community became split between factions that wanted Ali's death avenged and those which accepted the leadership of Muawiyah (r. 661-680), who established the dynastic Umayyad caliphate based in Damascus. After Muawiyah's death, the Shias of Kufa, in modern-day Iraq, invited Husayn (Ali's second son and Muhammad's grandson) to become caliph. The Iraqi governor stopped Husayn's caravan at Karbala, however, and massacred him and many of his family members. This incident contributed to the gradual growth of specific Shia doctrines and beliefs, especially as the Shias then became a minority that was often persecuted by Sunni-led regimes.
The Sadrist Movement draws upon this history to build its claims of legitimacy and to agitate for social reforms. Prior to the emergence of the Movement in the 1990s, Baqir al-Sadr (executed in 1980 and the cousin of Muqtada's father) had written a popular essay/booklet in 1977 which attempted to explain the 'miracle' of the longevity of the Hidden Imam or Mahdi. According to Baqir, although the Mahdi was born in 869, he was alive and living among us, and is waiting for the right moment to reappear to help victims of oppression (Filiu 2011: 142). For Baqir, a living, thousand-year-old Mahdi was plausible because the Qur'an contained a precedent – the Prophet Noah was reported to have lived for 950 years. Baqir's justification for a flesh-and-blood, living Mahdi gained ground in neighbouring Shia communities, especially in Lebanon (Filiu 2011: 145).
In the following decades, the legacy of Baqir and his successor Sadiq – Muqtada's father, who was also assassinated in 1998 – endowed this version of Mahdism with a populist appeal that became increasingly hostile towards the Iraqi regime and the US. After the US-led invasion of 2003, this helped Muqtada's newly launched Mahdi Army to swell its ranks to tens of thousands of members swiftly. The Army interpreted its militant activity as a means of carrying out the Hidden Imam's imperative to bring about justice (Filiu 2011: 148).
The doctrine of the imamate, according to which the rightful leadership of the community of Muslims should have passed from Muhammad to Ali and their direct descendants. The belief in the occultation of the twelfth imam, or the Hidden Imam, also makes the imamate a more esoteric concept compared to the caliphate – the traditional Sunni model of political government.
The congregational Friday prayer does not hold the same significance for Shias as it does for Sunnis, since the Hidden Imam – the true prayer leader – is in occultation. This changed, however, after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Unlike Sunnis, the Shias have developed elaborate pilgrimage rituals to shrines of their imams (ziyarat) in addition to the pilgrimage to Mecca (haj).
Shia jurisprudence allows for temporary marriage (muta), which Sunnis consider forbidden and akin to prostitution.
Because of the persecution that Shias have historically faced, they also consider it lawful to practice taqiyyah (concealing or dissimulating true faith under life-threatening or risky conditions).
Shias have much stricter rules on divorce compared to Sunnis. According to Shia jurisprudence, the husband is forbidden to proclaim divorce in anger or in drunkenness. Additionally, the pronouncement must be made explicitly in the presence of two witnesses.
Shias also have less male-centric inheritance laws compared to Sunnis, which might have something to do with the important position held by Fatimah (Ali's wife and the Prophet's daughter).
The central doctrine of the imamate means that Twelver Shiism is also more explicitly clerical and hierarchical compared to Sunnism. This has translated into particular relationships between Shia communities and state authorities over the centuries. A major turning point was the Safavid Empire's (1501-1736) designation of Shiism as the state religion, the significance of which is comparable to the Protestant Reformation in Europe (Cole 2002: 3). It was during Safavid rule in Persia (modern-day Iran) that the Shia clerical hierarchy became more institutionalised. Titles that are employed by high-ranking clerics today, such as ayatollah (sign of God) and hujjat al-islam (proof of Islam), emerged during this period.
During the Safavid era, however, the Akhbari or more literalist strand of theology predominated. Akhbaris held that because the Hidden Imam was in occultation, some religious practices could be relaxed or allowed to lapse. In the post-Safavid era, the Usuli or rationalist strand of theology, which was more pro-clerical, came to dominate Twelver Shiism. Usulis held that learned Shia scholars, or ulama, could stand in proxy for the Hidden Imam while awaiting his return. They could thus authorise state leaders to undertake obligations such as collecting taxes, appointing prayer leaders and leading defensive jihad (holy war) against invading enemies (Cole 2002: 10). In the nineteenth century, the jurist Murtada al-Ansari (1781-1864) developed the doctrine of marjaiyya al-taqlid (model or source of imitation), which effectively created the position of a Grand Ayatollah who could make decisions on behalf of lay Shias or clerics with lesser credentials (Louer 2012: 10).
This combination of developments paved the way for a recasting of the traditional themes of martyrdom, messianism and millenarianism, resulting in more militant, revolutionary expressions of Shiism in the twentieth century. Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, for example, built upon the concept of marjaiyya al-taqlid and Usuli thought to argue for a state that was led by clerics – the wilayat al-faqih (guardianship or governance of the jurist). In doing this, Khomeini turned post-occultation Twelver Shia theology into a revolutionary movement that successfully overthrew the secular Pahlavi monarchy in 1979 (Cole 2002: 10). The Sadrist Movement's combination of revolutionary zeal and political pragmatism needs to be understood within this historical context.
For Shias, the messianic expectation of the return of the Hidden Imam has been a fundamental element of doctrine since the ninth century (Louer 2012: 135). However, the development of the Shia clerical hierarchy, especially since the Safavid era, effectively diluted millenarian expectations within a growing religious bureaucracy. Outbreaks of millenarianism have since occurred, but these have often been anti-clerical and were often fiercely resisted by the clergy and the state. One prominent example was the cleric-led suppression of the 'babist' movement in nineteenth century Iran, which gave rise to a new religion, Bahaism.
The Sadrist Movement in Iraq is not entirely anti-clerical. In the 1990s, however, Sadiq al-Sadr's rhetoric depended upon drastic reinterpretations of classical Shia doctrines as a means to establish his legitimacy. This was after his appointment by Saddam Hussein as the state-approved marja (source of imitation), amid hostility by those who supported rival clerics such as Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (Louer 2012: 136). In April 1998, for example, Sadiq revived congregational Friday prayers, which had been suspended by Iraq's previous grand ayatollahs until the return of the Mahdi (Filiu 2011: 146). These Friday gatherings very quickly developed a political, anti-Saddam character, illustrating the difference between Sadiq's political messianism and the more quietist and apolitical beliefs of his rivals.
The current Sadrist leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, cannot claim the status of marja or even mujtahid (authority in Islamic law). Ironically, however, neither the lack of credentials nor hostility from the Shia clerical establishment have dented Muqtada's popularity amongst his followers, who are mostly underprivileged youth from deprived areas in Baghdad (Louer, 2012: 137). In fact, young Sadrists seem to identify very strongly with Muqtada's outsider status in the clerical and political scene and regard him as a quasi-messianic figure.
After the US-led military intervention and the fall of Saddam in 2003, Muqtada injected political urgency into previously suppressed Shia rituals and practices. On 11 April that year, for example, he gave his first sermon in his martyred father's mosque in Kufa, calling on his followers to walk to Karbala on foot (Cockburn 2008: 16). This was to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Husayn (the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and son of the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, Ali) and draw inspiration from it. In this way, the Sadrists were able to tap into the revolutionary significance of specific Shia events and rituals such as Ashura (which commemorates Husayn's death) and Arbain (another commemoration of his death, marked forty days after Ashura).
As large as these processions were, they went largely unnoticed in the Western media at the time (Cockburn, 2008: 17). Yet, as rituals that are central to Shia identity and group solidarity, Ashura and Arbain became increasingly salient as Sunni militants began attacking Shia targets.
Revolutionary or politicised interpretations of Shia rituals were not commonplace, however, before the 1979 Iranian revolution. Members of the al-Sadr family played an important role in catalysing such interpretations outside of Iran. In the 1960s, for example, Musa al-Sadr had already transformed the commemoration of Karbala in 1960s Lebanon from a ritual of fatalism to a ritual of rebellion (Louer 2012: 12). Starting from the 1990s, the sermons during congregational Friday prayers – revived by Sadiq al-Sadr – became important channels for Sadrist sentiments to be circulated even before the fall of Saddam and the US occupation in 2003 (Cockburn 2008: 105).
Muqtada, the current Sadrist leader, has also effectively utilised particular symbols to consolidate and grow the Sadrist Movement. He changed the name of his power-base in Baghdad from al-Thawra or Saddam City to Sadr City (Cockburn 2008: 128). Also, when Muqtada was trapped in Kufa in April 2004, he denounced President George W Bush as a modern-day Yazid, the second Umayyad caliph under whose reign Imam Husayn was killed in Karbala (Cockburn 2008: 22).
Additionally, the Sadrist militia wing was given a messianic name – the Mahdi Army, which rapidly established its reputation as a Shia self-defence force. In Shia eschatology, the army of the Mahdi is also known as the 'army of wrath' which treats its opponents with unforgiving brutality (Filiu 2011: 147). The Sadrists' explicit reference to apocalyptic heritage was meant to strike fear not only amongst their foreign or Sunni foes but also their Shia rivals. The Army emerged swiftly after Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni militant group, bombed Ashura commemorations in 2004, killing 270 and wounding 570 (Cockburn 2008: 144).
The Sadrists are not categorically anti-Sunni, however. Muqtada has been willing to cooperate with anti-occupation Sunni leaders as long as they condemn deadly attacks on Shia civilians – which many have been reluctant to do (Cockburn 2008: 166). His pronouncements, however, are not always explicitly apocalyptic or messianic. Rather, Muqtada often makes general statements that provoke messianic or millenarian speculation amongst his followers, which he does little to dispel. At the same time, he draws more heavily upon the theme of martyrdom – based on the history of the political assassinations of his family members – to punctuate his messages (Filiu 2011: 148-149). This rhetorical strategy is partly what endows his position with populist appeal.
The US-led military invasion of 2003 catalysed significant episodes of instability within Iraq, interspersed with fragile transitions to democratic government. Sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shias also became complicated by intra-Sunni and intra-Shia rivalries, which developed alongside cross-sectarian anti-US attitudes. Within this larger context, the Sadrists have, at different points, been both victims and perpetrators of violence and other controversies.
The regime of Saddam Hussein carried out killings of prominent leaders of the al-Sadr family – Baqir in 1980 and Sadiq (and his two older sons) in 1999. After Saddam was overthrown in 2003, however, intra-Shia violence was triggered when Muqtada's supporters killed Abd al-Majid al-Khoei, who was returning from exile in London where he headed the Khoei Foundation, a charitable organisation (Louer 2012: 91). Abd al-Majid's father-in-law, Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei, was previously the Grand Ayatollah and marja (model for emulation). The killing of Abd al-Majid happened amid Muqtada's increasing animosity towards those whom he accused of collaborating with Saddam's regime, especially clerics he referred to as the 'silent marjaiyya'. These included Ali al-Sistani, who had succeeded Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei as Grand Ayatollah. In the days after the murder of Abd al-Majid, the Sadrists surrounded the house of al-Sistani, demanding that he leave Iraq and go back to Iran.
This violent clerical rivalry is also characteristic of the milieu of Shia militias in post-Saddam Iraq, which include the Sadrist Movement's Mahdi Army (disbanded in 2008 but now revived as the Peace Companies). Other prominent militias include the Iran-backed Badr Organisation, whose parent organisation is the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), now renamed the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) (Louer 2012: 87). There are also the militias that splintered from the Mahdi Army – Asayyib Ahl al-Haq (League of the Righteous) and Kataib Hizbullah (Hizbullah Brigades) (Amnesty International 2014: 17). These Shia militias emerged alongside militant Sunni jihadi groups that were opposed to the US-led occupation, the most prominent being the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
ISIS – now known simply as the Islamic State (IS) – is itself responsible for massive human rights abuses within territories under its control. Its fighters also frequently carry out bomb attacks that target Shia civilians in Baghdad and elsewhere. The Shia militias have retaliated by abducting and killing Sunni men with impunity. According to Amnesty International (2014: 4), victims have been abducted from homes, workplaces or sectarian checkpoints on the road set up by the militias. Many were later found dead, usually handcuffed and shot in the back of the head. Some victims were killed even after their families paid large ransoms.
Although the principal perpetrators of anti-Sunni violence are the Shia militias, Amnesty International ultimately holds the Iraqi government responsible for its incapacity or unwillingness to protect civilian populations. There is even evidence that the government has funded or indirectly supported these militias (Amnesty International 2014: 5).
The scenario is complicated by the existence of anti-ISIS Shia militias, active in Iraq and backed by the Iranian government, which initially operated in neighbouring Syria (Al-Tamimi 2015: 80–81). When ISIS began gaining control of territories in Iraq, many of these militias turned their attention to Iraq as well. There are thus Shia militia groups that see Iraq-Syria as a single battlefield in their fight against ISIS and those, like the Sadrist Movement's Peace Companies, that focus on Iraq and can be critical of Iranian influence (Al-Tamimi 2015: 81–82).
The Sadrists – through the Mahdi Army and its splinter groups – have thus been part of this continuing climate of violence and war crimes. The Mahdi Army was especially influential during the sectarian violence that erupted from 2006 to 2008. At that point, the Bush administration even denounced Muqtada al-Sadr and the Sadrists as the greatest terrorist threat to the stability of Iraq (Al Jazeera and news agencies 2008).
The Sadrists are also known for their strict imposition of conservative religious rulings in the areas under their control, for example regarding gender segregation and women's dressing (Cockburn 2008: 173). Yet they are also pragmatic on certain issues. For example, in 2016, Muqtada called for an end to violence against people who did not conform to gender norms, including those perceived to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) (Human Rights Watch 2016). This was in response to the waves of extra-judicial killings of 'effeminate' men and youths in the 'emo' subculture – perceived in Iraq as followers of heavy metal or rap music – by members of the Mahdi Army.
December 2005 legislative elections by vote distribution: Green – United Iraqi Alliance (Shia, 41.2 per cent), Orange – Tawafuq (Sunni, 15.1 per cent), Yellow – Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan (Kurdish, 21.7 per cent). Source: Work of Kermanshahi put into svg format by MrPenguin20.
Muqtada soon reactivated the Mahdi Army, however, when sectarian violence erupted in 2006 and the Sadrists gradually withdrew from government (Godwin 2012: 453). After the surge of coalition troops to fight the 2007 Sunni insurrection that also threatened to crush the Mahdi Army, Muqtada declared a ceasefire and moved to Iran in self-imposed exile. The Sadrists then returned to participate in the elections of 2009 and 2010 and performed relatively well in both (Plebani 2014: 6).
Muqtada became increasingly critical of the government of the then Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki of the Dawa Party, which he initially supported. In 2013, Al Ahrar – the Sadrist Movement's political wing – joined a coalition of anti-Maliki Shia parties which included SIIC, their one-time rivals (Plebani 2014: 7–8).
leaders led popular protests in Baghdad, calling on Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi to eliminate corruption and change the 'whole system' of government (Arraf 2016, Chulov 2016).
Muqtada's influence on the Sadrist Movement, however, has never been entirely stable. He has not been able to control splinters from emerging, even from the Mahdi Army, nor has he been able to rein in the wanton violence perpetrated by some of his supporters. This might partially explain his reluctance to participate in politics more fully.
More generally, the Sadrist Movement's fluctuations between violence and peaceful political activity are a good example of the development of political millenarianism among Shia populations in the Middle East. By implicitly drawing upon millenarian and messianic rhetoric and symbols, Muqtada has turned his marginal position as a religious leader into an advantage (Louer 2012: 137). When rival clerics denounced his lack of religious credentials, his followers celebrated his 'outsider' status as part of their grievance and protests against a corrupt regime. This is why the major Shia political players have not been able to exclude the Sadrists entirely, especially when forming electoral pacts.
At the same time, Muqtada's pragmatism continues to result in surprising developments. Most recently, in August 2017, he visited the royalty and Sunni leaders in the United Arab Emirates. This came after he visited Saudi Arabia – traditionally hostile to Iran and to Shiism – and referred to it as a 'father figure' in the region (Cafiero 2017). Muqtada's visit to these Sunni-led Gulf monarchies is also significant in light of the Iraqi government's advances against the Islamic State earlier in 2017. The majority of Iraqi Shias see the Saudis as responsible for the rise of ISIS and it is unclear how Muqtada will try to reconcile their anti-Saudi sentiments with his recent visits to the monarchy. It is possible, however, that Muqtada's recent overtures are part of a longer-term strategy to diversify his pool of support within and outside Iraq and to dilute the influence of his opponents (Alaaldin 2017).
"The Mahdi Army men started to go through my brown shoulder bag….They found the contents very incriminating….For some reason cameras have always been regarded with deep suspicion by Iraqis as evidence of espionage. The militiamen waved it around saying that I wanted to photograph them and send the photos to the Americans who would then arrest them. They started to push me around and one of them kicked me. I thought they were working themselves up to kill us. Bassim [my driver] thought so, too. 'I believe that if Patrick had an American or English passport they would have killed us all immediately,' he said later." From Irish journalist Patrick Cockburn (2008: 3), in his book, Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Battle for the Future of Iraq.
Adamec, Ludwig W. (2009) 'Shiism' in The A to Z of Islam, Second Edition, 286–88. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press.
Al-Tamimi, Aymenn Jawad (2015) "Shii Militias in Iraq and Syria." Middle East Review of International Affairs 19 (1): 79–83.
Beattie, Hugh (2013) 'The Mahdi and the End-Times in Islam' in: Sarah Harvey and Suzanne Newcombe (Eds.), Prophecy in the New Millennium: When Prophecies Persist, Ashgate Inform Series on Minority Religions and Spiritual Movements. 89-103. Ashgate, Farnham.
Cole, Juan (2002) Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shiite Islam. New York: I.B. Tauris.
Esposito, John L. ed. (2004) "Shii Islam." In The Islamic World: Past and Present, Volume Three: 81–87. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Filiu, Jean-Pierre (2011) Apocalypse in Islam. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Godwin, Matthew J. (2012) "Political Inclusion in Unstable Contexts: Muqtada Al-Sadr and Iraq's Sadrist Movement." Contemporary Arab Affairs 5 (3): 448–56.
Louer, Laurence (2012) Shiism and Politics in the Middle East. London: Hurst & Company.
Plebani, Andrea (2014) "Muqtada Al-Sadr and His February 2014 Declarations. Political Disengagement or Simple Repositioning?" Analysis 244: 1–11.
Human Rights Watch (2016) "Iraq: Cleric's Call Against Anti-LGBT Violence." Human Rights Watch. August 18. Available at: https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/18/iraq-clerics-call-against-anti-lgbt-violence.
Cockburn, Patrick (2008) Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Battle for the Future of Iraq. New York: Scribner.
Al Jazeera and news agencies. "Profile: The Mahdi Army." (2008) Al Jazeera. April 20. Available at: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/.... (Accessed 25 September 2017).
Alaaldin, Ranj. "Could Muqtada Al-Sadr Be the Best Hope for Iraq and the Region?" (2017) Brookings. August 21. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/blog.... (Accessed 25 September 2017).
BBC. "1990: Iraq Invades Kuwait." (1990) BBC, August 2. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisda.... (Accessed 25 September 2017).
Arraf, Jane. "Iraq: Muqtada Al-Sadr's Green Zone Demonstration - AJE News." (2016) Al Jazeera. March 29. Available at: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/.... (Accessed 25 September 2017).
Cafiero, Giorgio. "What's next for GCC-Iraq Ties after Sadr's UAE Visit?" (2017) Al-Monitor. August 15. Available at: http://www.al-monitor.com/puls.... (Accessed 25 September 2017).
Chulov, Martin. "Protesters in Iraq's Green Zone Begin to Withdraw." (2016) The Guardian. May 1. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/wo.... (Accessed 25 September 2017).
Momen, Moojan. "An Introduction to Shii Islam (Excerpts)." (1985) Baha'i Library Online. Available at: https://bahai-library.com/mome.... (Accessed 25 September 2017).


text:
package deploymentzone.actor.unit.domain

import org.scalatest.{Matchers, WordSpec}
import deploymentzone.actor.Metric
import java.lang.IllegalArgumentException
import deploymentzone.actor.domain.NamespaceTransformer

class NamespaceTransformerSpec
  extends WordSpec
  with Matchers {

  "invoking NamespaceTransformer" when {
    "given an empty string argument" should {
      "return only the bucket name" in new NamespaceTest {
        NamespaceTransformer("")(counter) should be (counter.toString)
      }
    }
    "given a null argument" should {
      "return only the bucket name" in new NamespaceTest {
        NamespaceTransformer(null)(counter) should be (counter.toString)
      }
    }
    "given a valid namespace" should {
      "return the namespace.bucket" in new NamespaceTest {
        NamespaceTransformer("x.y")(counter) should be (s"x.y.$counter")
      }
    }
    "given a namespace that ends with a period" should {
      "throw an exception" in new NamespaceTest {
        an [IllegalArgumentException] should be thrownBy NamespaceTransformer("x.y.")(counter)
      }
    }
    "given a namespace that starts with a period" should {
      "throw an exception" in new NamespaceTest {
        an [IllegalArgumentException] should be thrownBy NamespaceTransformer(".x.y")(counter)
      }
    }
    "given a namespace that contains a reserved character" should {
      "throw an exception" in new NamespaceTest {
        an [IllegalArgumentException] should be thrownBy NamespaceTransformer("x@y")(counter)
      }
    }
    "given a null counter" should {
      "throw an exception" in new NamespaceTest {
        an [IllegalArgumentException] should be thrownBy NamespaceTransformer("x.y")(null)
      }
    }
  }

  private class NamespaceTest {
    val counter = new Metric("bucket", 1.0)(1) { override val symbol = "&" }
  }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub