The Maharajah- Air India's character trademark

In keeping with the recent aeronautical theme, here is The Maharajah. Created in 1946 by Bobby Kooka & Umesh Rao at J Walter Thompson, The Maharajah serves as a character trademark for Air India. Even with one hand missing, he cuts a fine figure. For the life of me, I cant remember where I found him, but possibly it was up at The Stanley Dock in Liverpool, in the late Eighties.

You can see The Maharajah at his splendid best, over at Demonstrate, where theres a nice collection of assorted  Air India posters. Below is the sticker on the base of the 4" figurine.

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.