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 .

Oxfam Rosita Doll by Belinda Lyon

This classic 1970s cloth kit rag doll was found at the car boot last summer. She came with a similar purple cat. This doll is called Rosita and was one of a series of dolls from around the world created by Belinda Lyon for Oxfam in the 1970s. Rosita was from Panama, she is 12" tall and comes with printed floral poncho, and dress. I love her daring underwear!

Clothkits was an English clothing company based in Lewes, East Sussex. Founded as a mail order business by Anne Kennedy in 1969 . You can view some later patterns here.

Clothkits specialized in selling pre-printed kit clothing for children and adults. The kit would comprise a pattern printed onto the fabric so that it could be cut out and assembled without needing to pin a paper pattern. The kits were also notable for containing all the materials needed to complete the garment. The spare fabric around the pieces of the main pattern would often feature a doll sized pattern for the same garment.

Postscript. 5 January 2012
Ive just found, a small but rather good flickr site devoted to Belindas work, you can find it here.

Ekta hair pins from India