aichmophobia	dromophobia
claustrophobia	necrophobia

John Vassos is one of the most under-estimated book illustrators of his day. The son of Greek immigrants to the United States, Vassos began a career as an illustrator in the twenties. He boasts a style like no other, intensely influenced by art deco, but firmly rooted in the fantastic and the strange. He worked with a very limited palette of black, white, silver, gray, and their intermediate shadings, always to startling effect. He illustrated relatively few authors during his active years—Coleridge, Gray, his wife Ruth Vassos, and his favorite, Oscar Wilde. In Phobia, Vassos produced his masterpiece. A large folio volume bound in impressed black and silver cloth contains an extensive journey into the world of the altered states produced by unmanageable fear. Twenty-four plates compose this catalogue of high anxiety.  For a closer look at Vassos’s life and bibliography, please go to the following web-site: 

http://www.dreamscape.com/pdverhey/vassos/contents.htm