Galt Wooden Tadpole fishing puzzle

A delightful find from last weeks car boot. A super 1960s wooden puzzle from Galt Toys. We think its designed by Fredun Shapur. We first encountered Shapurs Playsacks at the Bethnal Green toy museum in London. He produced lots of fabulous items for Galt including several other wooden puzzles. 

We found the puzzle board above without any pieces, but hunting through the sellers other detritus we were delighted to find nearly all the pieces.

As you can see, we are still missing the girls leg. Weve seen a similar puzzle by galt, but this appears to be a bit earlier. Below you can see the puzzle without the pieces in.

 You may be interested to know that a Fredun Shapur show is coming to London's Kemistry Gallery in October 2014, which should be very exciting. I understand Mr Shapur may even be there himself. Perhaps we'll be able to verify if this puzzle is actually by him. If you cant wait that long a 133 page booklet about Shapur was released a while back called playing with design, you can see it here.

Oh! and if you do happen to find the girls missing leg do drop me a line, and let me know!

Mark Boutavant’s Mouk

Mark Boutavant’s book Around the World with Mouk (pictured above) was a real high point of last year. Boutavant's brilliantly coloured pictures seem to have captured the spirit of Richard Scarry & Otto Seibold, and in doing so created his own beautiful world. How wonderful to see all the new exciting merchandise released by Djeco.

There are some brilliant wooden pull along toys for toddlers that we saw up in town yesterday, that are featured below. Thankfully the toys are available in the UK , but Roulapic the rabbit seems to have sold out everywhere already!










If the toys arent exciting enough, it appears Mouk is set to have his own TV show. You can view the pilot, here!

Ferelith Eccles Williams Marmaduke books

A while back I posted several dolls from the one two three away series, illustrated by Ferelith Eccles Williams. Born in 1920, Ferelith was a pretty prolific illustrator, but I didnt know she taught Ian Beck!

Back in the Fifties, before The Village with Three Corners, Ferelith produced a lot of splendid work for Elizabeth Chapman's Marmaduke, a series of tales about a red car. Shown above are two copies, that turned up locally. While the covers are pretty sumptuous, what really grabbed me, were the interior spots, a few of which are shown below.

M & S Routemaster Biscuit tin

Marks and Spencers has had some interesting packaging recently. I picked up quite a bit of their kids confectionery for Halloween, which seemed to take its inspiration from the Fifties.

This weekend we popped into the Cardiff store and were surprised to see they had already discounted these Sasek inspired Biscuit tins. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?

3 more Puffin covers by Grace Gabler

Yesterday, I picked up a copy of Postcards from Puffin. The box contains 100 postcards, featuring many childrens classic book covers. I was delighted to find two more covers by Grace Gabler.

Above you can see Jam Tomorrow, 1947 *. A counting Book 1957, & A Spelling Book, 1948. Last Christmas I posted the letter X , from her charming book "A child's alphabet", from 1945.

* The image of Jam Tomorrow is taken from Phil Baines new book, Puffin by Design.

Vector Park

Todays post is slightly different, in that its not an object, and it doesnt have much age to it!

I was sorting through a whole hoard of online bookmarks and rediscovered Vectorpark. Above is a screen grab from Feed the head. Its so simple and really quite beautiful! With its ephemeral noises, and bizzare goings on, theres a touch of Svankmajers Dimensions of Dialogue about it!

If you have a moment, I recommend hopping over and interacting with some of the other creations. Its a visual feast! Patrick Smith is the designer behind Vector Park and you can see more over at his blog!

Who knows perhaps this could be the start of a whole bunch of multi media posts!

Wicker Man Cheeseboard

This lovely Cheeseboard turned up at the local charity shop, last month. It measures 13.5" in diameter and has a metal rim, but like so many of my favourite things, it has no makers mark.

The figures are all in national costume and have a Scandanavian folk feel, but, underlying that, theres something sinister. It could be their raised hands! Are they praising the cheese? ( I like that idea!)

Whatever it is there's something a little bit Wicker man!

Jill McDonald The Royal Potwasher

We had a bit of a tidy up of my eldest sons room, the other day and Im embarrassed to say we found another Jill McDonald book. Jills images are everywhere at the moment with the 70th anniversary of Puffin books.

Only last week we were at The car boot and I got very excited when I spotted a woman with a brilliant, new Puffin bag. The bags are being given away when you buy three classic Puffin books. Also spotted at The Hay Festival were some brilliant mugs featuring Jills Puffin logo in several fabulous colours. The mugs were created by Art meets matter, but I cant find the cups online.

The Royal Potwasher was written by John F Waters for Methuen in 1972, and while not quite in the same league as The Pirates Tale, it is still enchanting. The story is a nice tale about following your dreams, below is a spread from the book.

J Otto Seibold Swatch watch

All the talk about mascots the other day reminded me that J Otto Seibold created a character Glüp for The Hanover expo in 2000, that the organising committee rejected. Mores the pity.

Seibold was the first artist that really exploited the possibilities of drawing on the computer.
When Space Monkey & Mr Lunch were first released, they were like a breath of fresh air, but unfortunately they spawned a 1000 poor imitations. In 1998, at the height of his success, Swatch released two watches by Seibold. I bought this one, while you can see the other design here.

Emanuele Luzzatti

A while back I posted The Pirates Tale, illustrated by Jill McDonald. It was one of my favourite books as a child. I had meant to post, a whole host of books that had captured my imagination as a boy, but somehow never quite got round to it. So here is the second book in the series by the Emanuelle Luzzatti; Ronald & The Wizard Calico, first published in 1962.

It really is a gem! I can remember being completely enthralled by the images and copied the knights endlessly. This is the only book I have by Luzzatti, but there are others. Whats more, is there are some fantastic animations that were Oscar nominated, no less. Below is The Invisible City by Luzzatti, which he co-authored with Giulio Gianini. Its absolutely charming!



Luzzatti died in 2007, aged 85. You can read his obituary at the Guardian

Richard Erdoes

Over the years, weve picked up lots of things on our travels. Primarily on the look out for the books of Miroslav Sasek and ceramics of the 1950s. With time theyve become harder to find and as a result our interests have diversified. Finding a copy of Saseks "This is" series always sent the heart racing, and when I first glimpsed these two on the shelves I thought wed found another !

These two books though are by Richard Erdoes, whose style certainly has echoes of Sasek, and the influential Jim Flora. I knew nothing about Erdoes when I found these books, but over the years numerous people have posted links and blogged about him. He sounds like an incredible man. Sadly Erdoes died in July 2008. To learn more, you can read his obituary here and to view inside Policemen go over on grainedits flickr site.

Before Erdoes worked on these two books in the 1960s he worked for Column magazine & Life magazine. You can see more at learning to share .

E J ARNOLD Picture Dominoes KG 681

These lovely picture dominoes are made by E J Arnold, of Leeds. They look like they're screen printed on a laminated plywood, and each domino measures 95 x 190mm, so not something you could play on a table! I think they were only available to schools.










The whole set consists of 36 pieces and have the sort of quality you associate with Galt Toys. Sadly theres no credit to an illustrator, but it does give the catalogue number of KG 681.
Above is a close up of a couple of my favourites.

Jean Marc Cote

I thought these drawings by Jean Marc Cote made a rather nice follow on from the New Years Day post, Visions of the Future.

Cotes' drawings from 1899 depicted a vision of the year 2000, and were planned as cigarette cards to celebrate the fin- de-siecle. However the publisher went bust, and the cards were never released!

The images here are taken from Henry Holts' 1986 book Future days, with an interesting, introduction by Isaac Asimov.

2010 Visions of the Future

The Noughties are over, and 2010 is here!
To welcome the new decade I thought Id post some images from Geoffrey Hoyles 1972 book, 2010.

The 46 page hardback book, illustrated by Alisdair Anderson depicts a vision of the Future and actually does pretty well. The computer is key! No one goes shopping anymore, as the cooker and fridge are directly connected to the supermarket. Bills are paid via the "vision phone", with access to your bank account via your thumb print. My favourite idea is the notion that everything, including electric cars is sent underground via a huge water filled tube under the ground.















Sadly the one prediction that Hoyle got wrong was his vision of the work place! He saw everyone working from home, and commuting a thing of the past!
















Well, I suppose you can dream !

Seasons Greetings with Grace Gabler

Happy Holidays to one & all!
Heres my festive post taken from Grace Gablers 1945 book for Puffin " A childs alphabet". Born Grace W. Evans, she resided in Kegworth, Derby. To view the rest of the stunning book, you should hop over to fulltable.com.

Ardizzone pantomime theatre

In 1947 Edward Ardizzone created a charming model theatre, to cut out and keep. It was for the December issue of The Strand Magazine. He also illustrated the cover, which is shown above.

As a special Christmas treat, Ive uploaded the 8 pages and instructions, as a pdf. So now you too can create his Pantomime Cinderella at home. The file is 7.9Mb, and can be downloaded here.

Below is one of the pages.

Ladybird Initial Teaching Alphabet ITA book

Last week we went to my wifes parents, and helped clear out the loft.
Amongst all the great old photos were a number of books from her childhood, of which this was one. Ive listed a couple of Ladybird books in the "eezy-reeding" scheme before. I still cant believe anyone learnt to read with this scheme, but there you go!

This little gem, first printed in 1964, is illustrated by the prolific Harry Woolley. Theres a short article about Woolley over at Bear Alley.

John Broadleys books

Heres a small collection of books by the very talented John Broadley. Each book, made by hand is an absolute treasure! Im hoping 2010 is going to be a really big year for him with the publication of his book with Jonathan Cape due to be published in March. He deserves massive success! You can sneak a preview over at his blog.

Cadburys chocolate box lid

Got really lucky at the car boot last weekend, when a couple were clearing out there loft.

There was a stack of stunning chocolate packaging from the sixties. This was the best of the lot! It seems odd today, that the actual chocolates dont feature on the pack, just a fantastic Wild West board game. And what about the colour palette?

Wooden GALT transport puzzle

I think I promised more by Galt, a while back. So here you go.

Galt made loads of beautifully designed toys, that won many a Design Council award. This very tasteful wooden puzzle is worthy of a mention! On removing the vehicle from the scene, you can see the interior, inside. Plain, simple and also very charming!