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!

Monkey Puppet with lenticular eyes

Another recent car boot find. This unusual monkey has a plastic head with lenticular eyes. They wink and open when you tilt him. His  body is made from anAfrican print towelling fabric and is  roughly stitched.

KEEP IN A COOL PLACE

Picked up a few more rather nice elastoplast tins last week, which Im sure I'll post soon. But what I really liked (although I didnt know till I got home) was all three had the same phrase on the side of the tin. Reminds me of Abbevilles fantastic 1987 book, on the golden age of matchbook art Close cover before striking. Sadly, now out of stock, it has always been  one of my favourites!

2012 CUP FINAL

Its the Cup Final tomorrow, and not only is it not the last game of the English football season, the FA have even moved kick off to 5.15. Is nothing sacrosanct anymore?

The fabulous little label is taken from The London Transport Museum archive, from the days when the Cup Final was still a central part of the British sporting calendar. You can search the London Transport archive via theme, and there are lots more football related posters if your interested!

Should you feel the urge for even more nostalgia, you can still download the 1975 FA Cup Final wallchart, that appeared in Tiger, that I posted back in 2009.

Candy & Andy...... & Mr Bearanda

Apologies for the lack of recent posts, but back again with more plastic, this time in the shape of the rather unusual, Mr Bearanda.

Mr Bearanda was a Gerry Anderson creation that apparently, never really took off. Not surprising really given the very strange mix of dolls, animals and humans. Id not heard of the Candy & Andy series, until finding out who this little figure was. Like so many of Gerry Andersons TV shows, it appears he licensed the rights to Dinky, who created a diecast version of the car, Stripey (the magic mini) and a set of small plastic figures to go with it. Mr Bearanda is one of those Dinky figures.

I found out all about Candy & Andy at the very good Age of Uncertainty. Well worth a trawl. The comments on the post make interesting reading too.

Until next time...

"I know what you did on holiday" Knitting pattern.

Happy New Year! I do hope 2012 will be kind.

With the holidays behind us, here is the first post for 2012. Todays post is knitting pattern 4078 from Ladyship wools. It kind of follows on from the last post of last year, where I shared some slides, from Canada. The last three posts create a visual form of word association, which is kind of fun. There was the Fisher Price air stewardess, then the slide of the Canadian hostess , and then, todays knitting pattern of a family viewing a slide collection!

Over the years Ive amassed a vast collection of knitting patterns. The contrived, staged family togetherness is always amusing. Like most things these days, you used to pick them up for pennies, but now the more interesting ones cost 50p or more. I dont know! It doesnt seem quite the same!

Birmingham Bull Ring Commemorative Plate

The Old Birmingham Bull Ring was the first indoor market in the UK when it opened in 1964. It mixed traditional open air market with a submerged market hall. Considered to be the height of modernity when it opened it soon fell from grace with its labyrinth of subways, and failing escalators. None of this was helped by the isolation the ring road caused.

Back in the eighties it used to run a rather good flea market, and I remember picking up a couple of fine finds there. Last month this plate, by Purbeck Pottery turned up. It commemorates the opening of the Bull Ring. It seems at odds to have an almost folk response to what was at the time, such brutal modern architecture!

Vintage paper plates

Live action Tele Babar Part 2

A couple of years ago I posted some lovely Babar dominoes. They caused quite a stir over at do you remember blog. Apparently a lot of people remembered the TV show, and found the live action Babar frightening. I can't see it! For my money, the masks and costumes are magical and share links with the Theatre of the Bauhaus.

Not long after I posted the dominoes I was lucky enough to find these two hardback copies in English, taken from the TV series. The books are beautifully designed, and the stills from the show are fantastic.

















You can watch a foreign language version of the Tele Babar TV show below.



Published by Methuen in 1969, the hard back books measure 248 x 300mm. As far as I can see there were three books in the series, the two here; Babar goes visiting, Babar Keeps Fit & Babar Learns to Drive.

How tolerant are you?

I picked this Tolerance calculator up last month at the local car boot. It was given away with Practical Electronics in April 1967. I was going to leave it behind, but the people on the stall had some interesting things and we got chatting. The items had belonged to a gentleman, who had worked as an engineer, at the BBC, in its early days. An intriguing image was built up of this chap, who had sadly passed away. Some of the items had been left to a museum, while other items, including this calculator were left to fend for themselves.

I have no idea what you do with a Tolerance calculator, but I dont think Id score very highly!

The notion of getting irritated by bad driving, dawdling tourists and screaming children, reminded me of the film below by Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz, Markets of Britain.



Most amusing!

Galt fabric building blocks

Six fabulous, 1960s fabric blocks from Galt, that turned up last month on a Sunday trawl. I never thought you could still find such gems. It makes all the blank days worthwhile.

I was in London with my mother, recently, and she was surprised how I still remembered with affection our trips to The Galt shop in Carnaby Street. It was always a magical experience. Perhaps, the toy I remember best is "The Old Woman who lived in a shoe", more of which, another time.





















Above are a couple more close ups of some of the cubes. Ive posted a number of lovely Galt finds on here before, but despite Ken Garlands website, Im still waiting for a more definitive history on the toy manafacturer.

Serpo, vinyl sticker. Rue Chaudrier, La Rochelle

The pick of todays finds was this delighful vinyl sticker, for Serpo, a French photographic store in La Rochelle. Fixed to the side of a crumbling old Polaroid camera bag, it now has a new home!

Sasek Matchbox booklet for Liberty's London 1964

Much excitement in the Mendelsson household last week, when this dropped through the post! I hadn't checked ebay for a while for Sasek, as its become rather tedious trawling through all the modern reissues of his, This is series!

However a couple of weeks ago, I hit the search button, and was delighted to discover this rather battered matchbox booklet by the man himself. The booklet has some rather scratchy pen and ink drawings, depicting various modes of transport in London.
















The booklet measures 320 x 65mm, was made in Finland in 1964 for Liberty's of London, it has a brilliant red interior and once contained 150 Crown matches.

Who are you?

Amongst the many discarded photos I have, some of my favourites are polyphotos! Taken by a photographer and not in a photo-me booth, the photographer would take 48 different photographs, for you to choose from. You would be given a fantastic contact sheet, with small postage stamp images to choose from.

I have some of my dad, and my father in law, but the three above, have always intrigued me! Who is this man? I always hoped he would be a typesetter, or perhaps an architect. Was he European (Dutch maybe?) or was he just an office manager from Manchester?

I guess we'll never know!

2011 Cup Final post

Its that time of year again. Its Cup Final day here in England! Here to celebrate are two corner kickers from an unknown football game, maybe from the Sixties. They show a striking resemblance to the fairground game I listed back in 2009.

Im bitterly disappointed that the FA, and the Premier league couldnt work out a way for the FA Cup to be the last game of the season, and that it was the only game played in Britain today. Its criminal so many traditions and rituals are being undermined! I guess Im just a silly romantic!

Butlin's Barry Island- John Hinde

A super haul of five John Hinde postcards from the car boot this Sunday. All featuring The Butlins holiday camp at Barry Island. Ive not seen any of these before, so a real technicolour treat!

One can only imagine what the holiday was like in the late sixties, but on the reverse of the card, Mrs Bradly does say the weather was not too warm, and she had met a friend (female) of her own age and they both like dancing at the Old Tyme Ballroom!

















As Ive mentioned before on here, I cant get enough of these glorious holiday souvenirs. Hinde team of photographers produced some pretty astonishing images. The series here are all taken by Edmund Nägele, you can read more about him and his time with the John Hinde, here.
















Below, Mrs Brady's favourite spot,the indoor heated pool. The card has a catalogue number of 3BY1.















On the back of 3BY13- The Lounge Grotto (below) Mrs Brady writes

"My friends husband is to ill to dance too much, so we are meeting up in the ballroom quite often. Hope the dogs are behaving themselves. The train leaves Barry at 6.15 on Saturday. So will be in Newport about 7.30. We'll wait at station entrance. "

Optimistic German miner doll & wife

At last the days are getting longer, and the weather seems to be improving, Hurray!
Im sure its not a coincidence but there were certainly more stalls at Sundays boot, and as result some nice finds! The lovely couple above, turned up, which I presumed were East German. Made from lightweight plastic, they are hollow. But without a makers mark, its been difficult to find out much. The guy on the left, is indeed a German miner, but no news about the girl. Hes 6" high, while she is 5".

5" Barry Goldwater Plastic REMCO figure

Barry Goldwater (January 2, 1909– May 29, 1998) was an American politician. He was a U.S. Senator from Arizona, and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election.

I picked up this 5" plastic figure at the last car boot of the year from a very muddy field in Elstree. He came with a rather nice electoral badge, that I'll post another time.

Coin money bank bags

On a recent trip back to London, we popped up to the Market at Covent Garden. Monday was the antiques market, and was always interesting and occasionally there were some good finds. I used to go a lot when I was touting my folder around.

I was surprised that unlike so much of London, it was relatively unchanged. The stall holders were still chatty and were happy to talk about their finds and share their stories.

These pre plastic coin bags came from one of the stalls, and include some bank tags. They come from the British banks, Lloyds and The Midland, (now HSBC). Made from a heavyweight paper, with serrated edges, they come in some attractive colours. Most un-bank like!

Misregistered Medical Mayhem

These mis-registered 1960s scraps came from Pollocks Toy museum in London. A fabulous museum round the back of Goodge Street, London. The museum was fantastic, but small. Although it did have a lovely shop.

Not only did they sell these 1960s version of Victoria scraps, you could also buy their trademark facsimile toy cardboard theatres. As well as some great repro clockwork toys.