May 27, 2009

FA CUP FINAL SOUVENIR WALLCHART



















I thought id post this little gem from 1975, seeing as tonight is the Champions League Final and on Saturday its the FA Cup Final. The poster comes from Tiger & Scorcher magazine, dated Monday May 3rd. The original price was 5p.

Ive kept the file quite large so that if you feel the urge you can download, print and fill in the teams and goalscorers. Enjoy the game!

May 22, 2009

Allibert nappy clips















Three plastic nappy clips form Allibert from 1970. The French plastics company that gave the world jellies and plastic bathroom cabinets .

May 20, 2009

Miroslav Sasek

As I hinted in the Jill Mcdonald post,the other day. Miroslav Sasek was one of my favourite Illustrators as a child. I was delighted to see that the This is Miroslav Sasek site has been redesigned and looks better than ever! I was really excited to see the link to the film of This is Israel on You Tube. Many thanks to oldlibraryfilms for uploading it.







Ive long collected anything to do with Sasek, and in fact probably my first purchase on ebay was for a signed Sasek book. Since then a few strange things have turned up, there were postcards from France and a poster from Hong Kong. But most excitingly, a tea towel of This is London. The tea towel came from America where the sellers aunt had collected "dish cloths" on her travels around the world. Screen printed on Irish Linen, its a lovely thing, but its lost some of the warmth of the book.











This tea towel is different from the one on the Sasek site, so who knows perhaps there are more gems out there waiting to be found. In 1996 I did attempt to find Sasek only to learn he had died in 1980. Virgin owned the rights to the books back then, and in a brief telephone conversation , I suggested it would be great to reprint. At the time I was told the world had changed a lot since the original books release and there would be too many inaccuracies if they were reissued.

Funny How times change!

Luckily I did manage to track down some original art work, more of which another time. Till then just a little detail from the above tea towel.





May 13, 2009

Performing dolphins















I stumbled across these rather lovely postcards today, amongst my collection of animal postcards. I was looking for a donkey, but was surprised to see all these on the same theme. All look to date from the late sixties.

I was kind of intrigued what the fascination was? Theres no doubt some of the attraction must date back to 1982 and the release of Orange Juices seminal first album, You Cant hide your Love Forever

Looking online for a few more performing dolphins I found a rather nice site featuring Brian Wyants amazing collection of amusement park postcards. Its all worth exploring but the highlights were the fairy tale theme park sections!

May 04, 2009

composite cowboy



















Found at a flea market in Paris in the early Nineties. I have no information about this fantastic cowboy, only that hes a composite toy soldier. The material is very brittle and unfortunately he has quite a bit of damage to him, but in a sense, that just adds to his charm.

May 01, 2009

nesting penguins



















I do like the simplicity of these three penguins from the 1950s. The largest wooden penguin is 70mm high and splits along the middle like a russian doll. The two smaller ones sit inside.