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

American Presidential whistles

These marvelous plastic presidential toy whistles were purchased from Shackmanns' in New York, some time in the Nineties. It was an amazing toy store on 5th Avenue. You can read an interview with Dan Shackman Jacoby, the original owner over at the Herald Tribune.

The store was full of amazing goodies, and its sad to hear that the shop is no more. It was an incredible experience walking round, picking up items, only to put them down two seconds later when you found something even more intriguing. After several hours we still had to go round twice, just in case we'd missed something.



















Today, Shackmanns does have an online presence, if not a physical shop, and it still looks pretty tasty. From flip books, to plastic novelties, its got something for everyone. The good news is you can still purchase these nodding animals above. Ours have seen better days, which is not surprising given they used to live on the back of our low level toilet cistern!

Monkey Noggin

As a child I know I had many a Viking Noggin, and Im sure I loved them dearly, but they were very Seventies. Like much of the era, they were consigned to the dustbin, and it wasnt until a visit to Camden market in the early Nineties that I considered Noggins again.

Back then Mark Pawson ran a little stall, full of rubber stamps, mail art and other plastic kitsch. Whether at that point he had already released his Noggins book, Im not sure, but he could well have been selling the actual figures.

The monkey, above, turned up last week, and Ive got to say we baulked at the £1.99 price tag. Since first seeing Pawsons book, we began picking them up, if the price was right (20p or less!), but more as a joke than anything. The problem with collecting as I think Ive written before, is that once you have one, youre always on the look out for the next.

I do like this chap, theres something very Yeti about him.

Dick Bruna Appleworld trainset

Last week we popped in to Newent to see the grave of Joe Meek, the pioneering 60s pop producer and songwriter. No trip, is ever complete without the obligatory charity shop trawl. So of course we found one.

In one, a small train set caught my eye. The track and train werent particularly nice, but the figures seemed familiar. The set was by a British company, called Playcraft, while the characters were all stamped Mercis '77.










On closer inspection I noticed a small label on the base of the Appletown station building ,that stated the building was based on an original Mettoy design adapted using illustrations by Dick Bruna.

Now like a lot of people my age I was brought up on Dick Brunas simple picture books, and can still remember coming home from primary school, full of pride, clutching my own versions of Brunas monkey and astronaut.

Sadly the Playcraft figures dont quite have the charm of Brunas original drawings, but none the less, a lovely find!

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.

Happy First Birthday!

Its just come to my attention that the blog was one years old yesterday. Happy Birthday!
We know how to celebrate at Down to the Cellar, so here to commemorate the event, a party invite by Newton Mill from the 1960s.

tintin live action book

One of the most popular posts Ive listed is the live action Babar domino cards. While few people have commented, its certainly wracked up the hits and started some discussion on other boards. There were a couple of Babar live action books that Ive been meaning to post for a while, but have never quite got round to it.

In the meantime heres a pretty rare find. This tintin picture book, in English accompanies the second live action film, tintin and the blue oranges. Sadly Ive never seen either film, but the pictures look great. Jean-Pierre Talbot plays tintin, and certainly looks the part.

My brother in Law salvaged this copy from a skip, a while back. It still amazes me what some people will throw out.

Monster in my Pocket

With all the snow, the local car boot has not been happening! Im suffering severe withdrawl symptoms. Even the local Charity shops stock is a bit thin on the ground, and what worries me more is the weather men are threatening more snow tonight. Sundays boot is under threat!

Todays post features a small selection of Monsters in My Pocket, that turned up in one of those boxes that you always find under sellers trestle tables. The boxes are always filled with odds and ends, forgotten toys, that were huge in their day, but now just a forgotten fad.

Released by Matchbox in the 1990s, Monster in My Pocket (M.I.M.P) were huge in their time and there were several series. Some like Crater Critters were free inside cereal packs, while others were released with the Nintendo game of the same name. Should you want to see more you should pop along to, the very informative raumhafen.de