bookpile: rosie’s walk

Last modified on 2010-09-20 06:24:35 GMT. 4 comments. Top.

i think the illustrations in this book go so nicely with some of the mugs in yesterday’s post that it would only be right to make this classic picture book today’s bookpile feature. are you familiar with ‘rosie’s walk’? its a bit of a classic, library staple here in australia, along with all of pat hutchins books. because its still in print and very popular here i don’t want to give too much away, but rather show you some fab illustrations and urge you to go buy your own copy!

rosie’s walk

written by pat hutchins

originally published 1971


i think the illustrations are so charming. they remind me of the detailed fine line work of some scandinavian ceramic designers. above is a detail of a sweet snail and some of those fabulous leaves!


watch out rosie! i like her feathers and the papyrus-like flowers.


love the naughty sneaky fox’s detailed pelt. and if wagons were that groovy i’d be a farmer! would you read farm! pilgrim?


more wonderful flowers and insects


don’t you think you should buy your own copy?

bookpile: firebrand by natalie scott & sandra smith

Last modified on 2010-08-30 11:49:23 GMT. 5 comments. Top.

you’ve seen wings on wednesday, you’ve seen the wizard of the umbrella people and you’ve seen please sit still (if you haven’t – quick, go look now). now its time to see the last of my sandra smith illustrated picture books. i really don’t know any more about her than i did when i first posted, but i have had lots of nice people comment or email telling me they remembered her illustrations and love them too. so if you know anything, please share, because there are lots of sandra smith admirers here! can you imagine if we tracked her down and scored an interview? dream!

firebrand push your hair out of your eyes

written by natalie scott

illustrated by sandra smith

published by ure smith, sydney 1968

find your own copy here

once there was a small girl named firebrand who had beautiful thick, red hair and a voice that roared. she lived with her parents and an older sister named carrots (take that gwyneth paltrow – apparently parents were raiding the crisper for names long before little apple was born!) her aunts would visit and comment on her beautiful hair and her mother would say “push it out of your eyes, firebrand” to which firebrand would reply with a roar “NO!”

each morning her mother would comb and tie her hair back and firebrand would turn red and say “i look like a bonbon!”. nonsense! everyone told her. but as soon as she was on the bus she’s let her hair down and fluff it til it fell into her eyes.


at school she learned songs and arithmetic and the teacher would say “fingers, stop sucking your thumb! curlycue, sit up straight! gossip, stop talking so much! firebrand, push your hair out of your eyes!” firebrand would scowl and roar to herself – NO!


after a fight with her sister, firebrand finds a tree and looking up she see’s all the beautiful leaves and so she climbs to the top. at the very top the wind blows her hair from her eyes and she looks out at the wonderful view. on her way down, though she loses her footing and falls hard against the ground.


her father puts her to bed and the doctor comes but finds no broken bones. firebrand was very sore and sorry for herself but everyone makes a fuss over her and her aunts bring her flowers, and chocolates and a gramophone.



the next day firebrand quietly brings her brush and comb and ribbons to her mother. she asks in a small voice, nothing like her usual roar, for her mother to tie her hair back. she discovered that with her hair back she could see all kinds of things she’d never seen before.


for more pages from firebrand visit my flickr

book pile: the milk box mystery

Last modified on 2010-08-08 01:17:37 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

another incredible book from the shelves of ms peta pledger.

the milk box mystery

written by: gina ingoglia

illustrated by: jerry smath

published: macmillan, 1975

the story follows alice and willi who go to stay with their aunt. they explore her small town and find an abandoned house containing a mysterious milk box…

i love the illustration in this book. its not often you see such vibrant, graphic work done with watercolour. it looks great, don’t you think?

the pattern and textures in the illustrations are really great too, i think. isn’t the woodgrain of the porch nicely done? and let’s not even get started on those fabulous flares!

ooh i love all the bubbly textures in this illustration. is it making you want to get the water colours out too?

inside of the mysterious milk box is a glass lion.. each day the children return to the house to find another glass animal is in the box.

the lace! ooh the lace.. here we see alice at the abandoned house, meeting a strange new boy.

such great composition on this page. everything is dynamic, isn’t it? i wish my grocer had a monkey. and some hand sanitizer too.

a quick google shows jerry smath to be a prolific illustrator, though i couldn’t see much in this similare style. are you familiar with his work? buy your own copy of the milk box mystery.

book pile: the old woman who lived in a vinegar bottle

Last modified on 2010-06-26 08:11:08 GMT. 6 comments. Top.

the old woman who lived in a vinegar bottle

written by rumer godden

illustrated by mairi hedderwick

published by macmillan, london, 1972

this book has been with me since i was little, and its possibly responsible for my love of patchwork. isn’t that a gorgeous cover? i really enjoy the pen and ink illustrations by mairi hedderwick. they evoke the colors and textures of the rugged parts of the UK countryside so well.

aren’t the pebbles and hillside rendered nicely? so washy and soft looking, with that added complexity of the pen lines. but on to the story…

the old woman lives a modest life in her vinegar bottle, which the author explains is most likely a modified oast house which bears a resemblance to old style stoneware vinegar bottles. her cat malt is well fed while she ekes out her existence on bread, trimmings from the butcher and a drop of milk for her tea.

one day while cleaning she finds a sixpence just as the fishing boats are coming to shore. she buys what she can from the fishermen – a small fish but she can’t bring herself to take it home and so she throws it back into the lake. just as she is leaving the fish calls to her. he is a prince and he offers to grant her anything she likes in return for saving his life. the old lady is stunned and thanks the fish but says she doesn’t need anything.

she returns home in a daze before realizing she has nothing to eat. nervously she returns to the lake and asks the fish for “a good hot dinner”. the fish tells her that when she goes home she will find one. at home the table is covered with roast beef and all the trimmings, bread and dessert, with milk and catnip for malt the cat. full from dinner, the old lady falls asleep and awakes later to a clear table and a note reading “another one tomorrow”.

that night a storm batters the vinegar bottle, and the following morning the old lady visits the fish if it would be too much trouble to have a little cottage. the old lady turns to head home and is met with a pretty little cottage. she walks through it in awe, but realizes her old furniture looks shabby and sparse. she once again asks the fish who grants her request. at home, in the new bedroom mirror the old lady sees how plain she looks. she asks the fish for new clothes and she’s immediately in a fresh new dress. at home her wardrobe is stocked with everything she could need. as she eats her dinner that night she realizes she no longer has clothes to work in and she couldn’t possibly get her new clothes dirty. she hurries to the lake and without greeting him, demands a maid.

“‘go home and you will find one’ said the fish. his voice was quiet … and a shade tired.”

at home, the old lady is irritated by the maid’s presence and the lack of her rocking chair. she hears the church bells and decides to go to church to show off her new clothes. but her shoes pinch and so she marches down to the fish to demand transportation. when she finds a cart and pony she sniffs in disdain and stamps back to the lake to explain she wanted a car. a car appears, but the old lady wanted a different car with a chauffeur.

the little fish did not say, “go home and you will find one,” but stood up out of the water on his silver tail. “you used to curtsey to me,” said the little fish. “yesterday you came and said ‘thank you’ before you touched a morsel of the dinner i sent you. that was yesterday, but now! you are a greedy and ungrateful old woman,” said the fish. “go back to your vinegar bottle.

back at the vinegar bottle everything was back to how it had been. the miserable old lady goes back to the lake to apologize and beg the fish’s forgiveness. the fish offered to restore the dinners, and cottage, and clothes, and maid and chauffeur for the repentant old lady, but she insisted that her and malt were best in the vinegar bottle. all they needed was a nice hot sunday dinner.

have we all learned a valuable lesson from the fish? i think i’d be happy with someone magically providing dinner!

bookpile: wedding by barbara norfleet

Last modified on 2010-06-15 00:16:21 GMT. 4 comments. Top.

wedding by barbara norfleet, a fireside book published by simon and schuster, 1979

today’s bookpile choice is quite different from our usual cute kid’s book fare, but i just had to share  it with you. this book comes from my mother’s collection and despite never being much of a wedding girl, i’ve always enjoyed looking through the photos and wondering about the women behind the veil. i hope you enjoy a peek at this book, and i hope the photographic subjects all live(d) long and happy lives together.

‘wedding’ by barbara norfleet is the expanded catalog of a photography exhibition, ‘the wedding’, that was held in 1976 at the carpenter center for visual arts at harvard university. the exhibition was such a success that the following year it moved to new york’s international center for photography and became one of the most popular shows in the history of the ICP.

click any image to view a larger version.

her veil is very beautiful and worth a close look

double wedding!

what a cute couple! i really love how happy everyone looks, the whole family is so joyful – and the old lady with the little girl has her hair in rollers. can you imagine seeing that in today’s magazine-esque staged wedding photos?! even then it’d no doubt be painfully ironic.

draw your own academic comparison between the last supper print on the wall behind the newly weds and their bounty of wedding swag. i like their satin bedspread.

i really like this photo, taken at a home rather than a studio. under the benevolent watch of the kennedys.

i find this image quite sad, poor lonely bride on a tarp sheet. her beautiful dress seems at odds with the mess hall she’s standing in, and that lone streamer in the top of the frame doesn’t do much to turn the mood around. do you think she stood there for the whole day while people queued around her for cake? maybe she’s a ghost and its not really her wedding.

this dress is my favorite. she looks young, elegant and modern (for the time). i like the composition, making her look toward the bright future, while those cherub sculptures gaze at her beauty. its a bit hokey, but i like it.

this feels like the collision of two stages of a girl’s life: the horsey ‘tween’ stage, and the bride stage. do they give ribbons for brides?

i love this photo! look, she’s flashing her garter belt! and so many flowers! and her eyes! oh its all so great and like some eastern european vision of americana.

damn hippies. (i kid, i kid, you guys know how much i love damn hippies. if you’d prefer to you could read it like “day-um!! hippies!”)

and lastly let me leave you with this happy, carefree photo of the tossed bouquet.

get your own copy from amazon

(FYI i’m an amazon affiliate, but also a person who thinks you should own interesting books)

bookpile: ‘wonderfully made’ by ruth s hummel

Last modified on 2010-06-01 11:41:04 GMT. 5 comments. Top.

today’s bookpile book comes from the incredible collection of ms peta pledger. i couldn’t believe this book when i saw it its just so wholesome and sweet! its a lutheran-based ‘life education’ book. so if you’re still wondering where you came from or why you’re having these strange new feelings, read on! firstly, you should be a natty teen – i’m pretty sure if these preppy kids stripped down they’d be strategically covered by fig leaves.

wonderfully made, by ruth s hummel & w.j. fields
published by concordia publishing house, 1967
purchase a copy from amazon

recipe: take one man (preferably in a suit, shade of lime green not important) and one lady (must have petite waist and be partially transparent when standing by her man).

love brought you to life! also: ovaries. aren’t they neat and tidy looking? i hope mine have a groovy lettered sign like that.

this is where a baby lives. please note more fabulous typography. type like that makes the miracle of birth way better.

as a parent, i must point out that kids don’t produce giant purple, fun, lettering. its mostly shouting which is undetected by the eye, but doubly detected by your rapidly diminishing sense of hearing.

i’m captioning this illustration ‘valley of the doll: the joy of being a mother (or just the joy of those awesome sedatives everyone took in the 60s)’

i have a feeling this poor teen has been put in a coma by that wallpaper. so many roses! as you can see he tried to cover it a bit, but the pennants! they do nothing!

just one more bit of fabulous typography! can you imagine how this book would go down with the ‘youth’ today? i think their irony-meters would fall off!

book pile: daily sketch children’s annual

Last modified on 2010-05-15 09:46:07 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

this week’s book pile is one from my childhood collection. i really love this old kind of children’s annual, a book full of puzzles, games, poems and stories. i seemed to end up with quiet a few different annuals and i really liked the variety in them. this one especially has very cute illustrations by quite a few different artists. there is a list of the artists on the book plate page which i’ll include here seeing as i can attribute individual illustrations:

harold beards, evelyn cuthbertson, george dixon, gilbert dunlop, jill francksen, james hunt, paddy kerr, may kirkham, g.m. luckcraft, gladys mason, madeline mays, rita parsons, shirley ann richardson, jenny reyn, madeleine robinson, sabine schweitzer, patrick sinclair, joan thompson, m tompkins and leslie webb.

there is no publisher or date (i’m guessing its early 60s with some older material in it too), only the information that it was printed in great britain associated newspapers ltd. london, E.C.4… its a mystery book!

here is the charming paper lining the covers. i love the little imps or pixies, swinging and sitting on toadstools.

first page is a sweet book plate-type page, listing the illustrator’s below.

title page: can i even articulate how much i love fancy trains in children’s illustrations? can i?! no. i love them. the fancier the better. i like the gaudy victorian typeface they’ve used. i expect the train is going to stop near a band stand with the actual sgt. pepper’s band is playing.

‘at the fair’ by gladys oakley. so much amazing vintage carnival inspiration. i’d love to see a whole mural of this picture. its so british!

minds out of the gutter please! ‘the magic hole’ by wendy grant is about a boy who climbs into a tree, only to exit via a hedge. i’m sure we’ve all been there. stories like that used to really scare me when i was little so you won;t find me climbing into mysterious holes too often.

‘the tree of allerdam’ by ambrose haynes about a beloved tree in the market square. the mayor wants to cut it down but the birds of the tree turn against him. possibly inspired the film ‘the birds’. the pretty illustration doesn’t really do justice to the horror of the birds attacking the mayor on the adjacent un-pictured page.

‘waiting for the holiday train’ is a very british poem. its all about a trip to the seaside, which if ‘brighton rock’ by graham greene* taught me anything, is the high point of the british person’s summer and lots of wholesome fun.

* see that? thats literary humor. i’ll stop being clever now.

the back cover, with cute bookworms.

book pile: the wizard of the umbrella people

Last modified on 2010-06-05 07:22:06 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

the wizard of the umbrella people
by louise kent
illustrated by sandra smith
published by ure smith, sydney
1971

this is the third book i’ve featured illustrated by sandra smith, and unfortunately i’m still not any more enlightened as to what her story is. what i’m very certain of is i love her style. its so bright and cute and i love the art nouveau style curlicues that make her illustrations even more dynamic.

unlike wings on wednesday and please sit still (both written by natalie scott) this book was written by  louise kent who is also a mystery. i promise, i have actually done some research into this but information on either author or illustrator is no where to be found online! if any of you know anything about either please leave a comment, because i love to have some background to the books i cherish.

the story tells of the people in the land of umbrella. unsurprisingly, they love rain and spend their days playing in puddles and splashing about.

the land of umbrella had its own wizard, willy,  who had invented the umbrella. he lived in the highest tower of royal umbrella palace but as the years went on he got more and more forgetful. one day there was no rain, so the king sent his footmen to fetch the wizard.

the king demanded the wizard bring back the rain, and with help from his cat lightening, the forgetful wizard tries a couple of spells, but the sun carries on shining.

the king grew angrier so the wizard tried more spells but with no luck. at last he remembered a very special spell, and the footmen were dispatched to collect the ingredients:

first, the tick of a clock

and a sweet smelling fish

a two week old spider

(now what else do i wish?)

a bag of small peanuts,

a holly branch too

and a large ostrich egg-

any color will do.

there’s  just one more favor,

the very last one:

my large mixing bowl

helps banish the sun.

outside the palace the citizens in their rapidly sweaty rain gear gathered in the sunshine.

as the wizard worked on the spell, and the umbrella people waited patiently, the streams and rivers of  the kingdom were drying up.

the powerful spell cast the wizard up to the sky on the back of a winged white horse, into the sun.

ringle, tingle, tangle – DONE

go away, you naughty sun

the wind from the horse’s wing’s swept up the citizens of  the land of umbrella and when their umbrella’s pierced the clouds it began to rain again.

(pictured above is the wizard’s cat, lightening)

so now you know what to do if it stops raining

book pile: how we go

Last modified on 2010-05-01 16:58:38 GMT. 5 comments. Top.

book pile: 123

Last modified on 2010-05-01 16:55:18 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

book pile: the grateful crane

Last modified on 2010-05-01 16:51:59 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

she offers to weave the old couple some fabric, however she insists she must be left alone in the weaving loft. for three days she works tirelessly, and the couple begin to worry for her health. at last she emerges with a bolt of finished brocade. couple are astonished at the fine quality of fabric she’s created. she tells the old couple to sell the cloth.

book pile: alligator pie by dennis lee and frank newfeld

Last modified on 2010-05-01 16:44:41 GMT. 2 comments. Top.

illustration accompanying ‘i found a silver dollar’

isn’t the lettering for ‘zoo’ just fantastic? it may not surprise you that frank newfeld is the co founder and president of the society of graphic designers of canada. yesiree, it takes a society founder to wield a type that fancy!

i hope you’ve enjoyed the peek into this amusing book. if you’re interested in getting a copy for yourself click this link. i would have adored this book as a kid. so much color and type, and the poems are so fun, but its pretty enjoyable as an adult too and that has to be the secret to an enduring kid’s book!

book pile: rock dreams

Last modified on 2011-04-26 03:12:51 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

written by nick cohn, and illustrated by guy peelaert

a collection of stunning illustrations of music’s most famous faces paired with lyrics, or short biographies. what sets this book apart for me is the varying approaches it takes to the artists portrayed: reverence, irreverence, satire, nostalgia, commentary and good old fashioned gaudiness. the combination of words and pictures present both magic realism and the mundane: some pages poignantly express the isolation and heartbreak fame can bring. other pages turn popular culture icons into religious ones. and more yet show snippets of that ‘american dream’ that that era of music sang about. oh and let’s not forget the Rolling Stones in PVC bondage gear… the over-the-topness of the pictures matched the over-the-topness of the spirit of rock, maaaan!

the following are some excerpts of illustrations & text from the book:

the promised land: california was teen heaven, perfection, where the sun was always shining, where the cosmis surfer’s wave unfurled toward infinity, where everyone was golden, young and beautiful forever. for every girl, there were two boys, and so they lounged by the poolside, drinking cool beers and counting the passing bikinis, or they played touch football, in eternal summer, or they drag raced, made love at the drive-ins, watched technicolor sunsets, led plans, wrote songs…

jerry lee lewis: “either be hot or be cold. if you’re lukewarm, the Lord will spew you forth from his mouth”. thus spoke jerry lee and he rampaged through the land, with his piano, his bible and his thirteen year old wife. night after night, leaping high upon the piano, he preached with fiery tounges, in sermons of arrogance and lust. then his audience would surge forward and storm the stage, like converts, to shake his hand and be blessed.

 

phil spector: strange resurrection of baby phil, the highschool dropout: arriving in new york, he slept in offices, on floors and benches and desk tops, until finally he was set loose to produce a record. then, at a single shot, he paid back twenty years’ accumulation of rage. out poured the wildest torrents of pent-up energy, invention, insanity, malice, fantasy, grotesquerie and when the smoke cleared, he stood revealed in hollywood technorama: a colossus: true inheritor of cecil b de mille: ultimate rock’n'roll showman, teendreamer, and bullshitter, genius and freak.

 

… now when i come home, late at night, my slippers are waiting in front of the fire, my pipe is on the mantleshelf, and priscilla is sitting in bed with curlers in her hair. then i kiss her on either cheek , and on her lips like cherries, and i hold her close to my heart. “welcome home”, she says, and at last i am at peace.

donovan: the fool on the hill

then there were two, because the first had flown off through the window and disappeared into the skies, and they sat among the debris, sated, slightly ageing but not too jaded to pull the same rude faces, or to stick out their tongues once more, as they’d done in the days of their first youth.

 

buddy holly: hey what happened? one moment i was in lubbock, texas and i had bad teeth, bad eyes and sang with my nostrils and adenoids, hiccoughing and whining. everyone said i was crazy, so i left and came to new york, an i met a man who straightened my teeth, gave me new glasses, dressed me up real italian sharp.

next he called me buddy holly, and what kind of name is that? then he sent me out on tour, and put me on tv, and now i’m a rock’n'roll star.

i like it. everywhere i go, girls scream at me, boys ask for my autograph and i ride around in a cadillac. but sometimes i can’t believe it – i remember lubbock, texas, and everybody laughing at me and i ask myself, can it last?

let paul anka tell how you too can be a man…

california girls: “we’ve been having fun all summer long…”

if this glimpse of a fascinating book has whet your appetite, i really recommend picking up a copy of your own. thankfully taschen are publishing it now, so follow the link below and make your own small rock dream come true!

vintage children’s book: shaun & the cart-horse

Last modified on 2010-05-01 16:15:09 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

vintage children’s book: pirouettes

Last modified on 2010-05-01 16:09:18 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

the whale

john is a purple young whale

and a friend of the small golden fish

each evening he reads the a fairy tale

while they eat onions out of a dish

the brave owl

arthur owl is never afriad

he’s the bravest bird

that ever was made

he wears plastic beads

with a watch on a chain

and his toes always tingle if there’s going to be rain

vintage children’s book: the garden of abdul gasazi

Last modified on 2011-05-02 06:36:20 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

black and white week: foto reporter sehen die welt

Last modified on 2011-05-02 06:34:03 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

posters in munich

beatles fan, london

a boy (whose mother had used thalidomide while pregnant) with a “heidelberger arm”

 

a bunny at the playboy club in london

vintage children’s book: the butterfly ball & the grasshopper’s feast

Last modified on 2011-05-02 06:07:24 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

vintage children’s book: please sit still

Last modified on 2011-05-02 06:10:04 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

it was published in 1969 by paul hamlyn pty ltd in australia. you can see it in the national library of australia collection here.

the story follows toby and sarah, who are twins. they go to holiday with their aunt edith who lives by the sea and each day they go for a different outing. everywhere they go they wiggle and squirm and aunt edith clicks her tounge and tells them “please sit still my darlings.”

on monday they go for a ride on the ferry and they fidget. on tuesday they visit the dentist, where they squirm. on wednesday they visit the theatre. they’re so excited to see a princess in a golden crown and a prince riding a brave white horse that they can’t possibly sit still and aunt edith clicks her tounge and tells them “please sit still my darlings. how you two do wiggle and squirm!”

on thursday they visit aunt edith’s friend, miss spratt in her best room. they eat all the cream cakes and drink all the lemonade and they want to explore but aunt edith says “please sit still my darlings. how you two do wiggle and squirm!”

on friday it rains and they play cards inside with aunt edith, all the while fussing about. on saturday the go to the circus where they’re too excited to sit still. “please sit still my darlings. how you two do wiggle and squirm!” says aunt edith (click here to see the full page spread of the circus)

on sunday they go to church in their best clothes where they wiggle about like the other children. on monday aunt edith is too tired, so the twins play outside in the garden: “out in the garden the sun was shining. there were shady green tres and tangles of flowerbeds and secret places. beyond the garden there was a beach with wide butter-yellow sand and beyond the sand was the sea which rippled like a great blue carpet and curled frothing white where the waves broke on the beach.”

While playing outside, toby and sarah wonder why aunt edith wants them to sit still. they ask the sun who tells them things would be in a mess if he sat still. they ask the trees who can’t give them an answer either: the wind blows the trees so they’re rarely still either. they ask the birds who think sitting still is a terrible idea, and they ask the sea who tells them there is nothing as restless as it.

when night falls they still don’t know why aunt edith wants them to sit still. their father picks them up and they go home. In bed, toby asks the moon if he knows the answer, and the moon tells them he’s been on the move for thousands of years.

in the morning their mother asks them why they’re so still, so the ask her about aunt edith. she tells them if they were still she’d think something was wrong and adds “there’s plenty of time to sit still when you grow old!” indeed.

apologies for posting this so late in the day, a certain child of mine who also won’t sit still is having a birthday party on the weekend, so i’ve been busily preparing! i hope you enjoyed seeing more of sandra smith’s art, i really wish i knew more about her. if anyone knows anything, please comment!

book pile: my current reading list

Last modified on 2011-05-02 05:31:29 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

just look at that great pile of books, would you?! and these are just the big glossy picture books awaiting my loving attention. lets not even mention the threatening tower of novels teetering next to the bed, ready to brain me as i sleep! one of my new year’s resolutions this year was to read more. i was doing well until a month ago. i got busy and a bit of a backlog (or should that be booklog) occurred. i’ve enjoyed a cursory flick through these, but its just not enough! each one of these beauties demands an hour or two, languishing in its pages and soaking up all the glossy, glossy images. so join me for a quick tour through the pile, and maybe my pile can inspire you to construct your own monument to the glory of not-having-enough-hours-in-the-day!

overspray: riding high with the kings of california airbrush art

airbrush is one of those mediums i think of as something akin to a guilty pleasure. i always think of it being used on bad car murals, or t-shirts you’d see at the wrong kind of market (you know, those markets that sell knock off band shirts and glow in the dark religious figurines – yeah, i love them too.) or the signage for adult bookstores. i know, i know – its incredibly labour intensive, and takes huge skill, but when it goes wrong, it goes uncanny valley wrong. but ‘overspray’ doesn’t cover these crimes against good taste, its about the golden age of airbrush – 1970′s LA. specifically, charles e. white III, peter palombi, dave willardson and peter lloyd who are considered the men at the centre of the scene and whose work was used for playboy, levi’s, the rolling stones, rod stewart, american graffiti and tron. (incidently my childhood wasn’t completely filled with terrible airbrush art, i also loved looking at my mum’s copy of rock dreamsby guy peelaert)

british animation: the channel 4 factor 

 

after enjoying the channel 4 UK retrospective that was part of the melbourne international animation festival this year, i was pretty excited to unwrap this book on my birthday (yes, i know, i’m a nerd). written by clare kitson, who was the commissioning editor at channel 4 from 1989 to 1999, this book promises a peek behind the scenes of an amazingly creative environment. thanks to my mum taking me along to (age inappropriate) animation festivals when i was small, i have a real obsession with animation, and i really look forward to learning more about the prime of british animation (they had an animator in residence at ch. 4! can you imagine that now?! no. sad, really.) 

tales designed to thrizzle vol. 1

 

anyone who follows michael kupperman on twitter (@mkupperman) knows his sense of humour defies description. its silly, but clever and very absurd. mere words won’t do it justice! if you don’t know his work, watch this clip from adult swim’s snake and bacon and either get it or don’t. either way, i’ll be over here giggling at the toad and his mistress, snake and bacon (“ssssss!” “crumble me over a salad!”) & district attorney of 1000 faces. 

late 60′s fashion style and swinging 60′s fashion style

 

pie books, please, stop it. you’re sending me broke! (please don’t stop!) these books are no words, all pictures. as soon as i’m done drooling on them i’ll wipe ‘em down and share some pics. you guys like pretty pics, right? yep! i thought so! brace yourselves. its gonna be “groovy, baby” (let’s never mention that again) 

1960s floral fashion print

from my brief peek at this book, i can tell you, its like all those ebay/etsy/thrift store fabrics you always wanted but never scored. and florals, so many florals. though i am particularly looking forward to reading this (and not just ogling the fabric porn) because (in case it wasn’t already obvious enough) i’m fascinated with the 60′s and what a departure it was from previous decades’ styles, and how the counterculture crossed into mainstream culture resulting in one eye-searing, mind-freaking collection of fabrics, design, and decor.

boutique – a 60s cultural phenomenon

 

as with the previous book, boutique is written by marnie fogg (who clearly needs to adopt me and take me on her time traveling adventures) and contains a highly detailed account of the rise and impact of boutique culture in 60′s london. all the names are here, mary quant, barbara hulanicki, paul smith etc and it is packed with photos and illustrations that i am dying to pour over! this one seems like a compulsory text for any vintage fashion enthusiast. 

cartoon modern

 

yep. its more animations. but this time its mid-century animations! this style has seen such resurgence in the last few years, and its charming graphic simplicity is hard to resist. cartoon modern is filled with sketches, model boards, cels, and film stills of edgy, modern characters. if you like this kinda thing, check out Surogat/Ersatz by Dušan Vukotić

 

100 flowers to knit & crochet and beyond-the-square crochet motifs 

 

thanks to pip and the meet me at mike’s book, i am now a crochet artiste! i struggled and i cursed and by the end of the week i had made a (slightly wonky) granny square. some fine tuning of my skills with shelley at little sparrow and i am now an unstoppable crochet machine. i’ve made a tonne of squares for a blanket, 3 hats, 1/2 a scarf and 2 bunnies. but my insatiable lust for new challenges knows no bounds, and so i’m quickly emassing a library of crochet books. the downside to this is the crochet is cutting into my reading time, and so i have this big pile of books, and the big pile of books consists of more crochet times, and so… at this point in the circle, i leave you. 

what’s in your reading pile? and who can i write to about getting more hours in a day?

vintage children’s book: wings on wednesday

Last modified on 2011-05-02 05:50:00 GMT. 7 comments. Top.

‘wings on wednesday’

written by natalie scott

illustrated by sandra smith

published by paul hamlyn 1969

ISBN 0600039714

(click images to enlarge)

 

wings on wednesday tells the story of a little girl named hatty. every wednesday, hatty and her mother spend the day with aunt zoe. ‘fly out of the room like a good little bird and let me have a nice long chat with your mother’ aunt zoe would say to hatty.

hatty would go out to the garden, where a squawking cocky (a parrot) lived. hatty didn’t like the cocky, but she did like the feathers it dropped and so she began collecting them each week.

finally, when she had collected enough, she made her self a pair of wings… and off she flew (much to the envy of the caged cocky!) each week, hatty flies off, over the town, until one week she sees a forest. she lands in the forest to find it full of different species of birds who find her fascinating and rare…

 

all the birds want to talk to hatty, and so each week she returns to talk to a different kind. they all tell her what species they are, and what makes them special or rare.

“but all the birds were certain that hatty, who could take off her wings and leave them on the ground was the rarest of them all”

 

then her aunt moves away, (apologies for the patchy job of scanning it) and though her parents joke about it, hatty knows what it is like to ‘fly out of the room like a good little bird’

i’m not sure where this book came from – i’ve always had it and i’ve always been fascinated with the illustrations. my copy is dogeared and missing a cover and back page and i haven’t been able to find any information on author natalie scott or illustrator sandra smith, but i love the psychedelic magic marker illustrations with art nouveau overtones. the publisher, paul hamlyn seem to have been behind a number of really fab picture books of that era, lots of psychedelia.

i also own ‘firebrand, push your hair out of your eyes’ and ‘please sit still’, also by scott and smith, and although both are excellent i love ‘wings’ best. if anyone can offer any further information, please comment below. this book has played such a huge part in developing my aesthetic, i would really love to know anything about the ladies who created it.

 

 

 

vintage children’s book: little oleg

Last modified on 2010-05-01 15:04:21 GMT. 1 comment. Top.