you can click on the mosaic to expand the view
We’ve been having a bit of a spring clean this week. We’re letting go of a few things - one of the first things is this collection of Wallpaper* Magazines.
The group consists of the very rare and covetable launch edition and the following fourteen issues - they span late 1996 to late 1998.
They’re currently up for sale as a single lot on eBay!
Longtime followers of our blog will know that we love the art of Charley Harper. This one, entitle “Octoberama” is one of our favourites! He was very prolific and his work can be found as originals artworks, prints, books, calendars, stationery, mouse mats… the list goes on & on… all of which can be bought from either the Charley Harper estate website or Amazon UK or USA.
We’re big fans of postage stamps here at H is for Home and this gorgeous example was designed by British fashion designer, Paul Smith. It’s one of a set he recently designed for the Isle of Man to commemorate the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Oh, and did you know that Paul Smith is a HUGE cycling fan?
The Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair 2011 is being held this weekend in Manchester city centre - we went to the preview night on Thursday.
It was great to see designer-makers whose work we’ve long admired - there was also the thrill of seeing fresh, new exhibitors.
We featured Ken Eardley, whose ceramics are shown above in last year’s GNCCF blog post - once again, his stand had real impact. Things are going really well for him with magazine features such as this recent one in BBC Homes & Antiques.
Another striking space belonged to Jane Blease who works primarily with bentwood & reclaimed plastic often with her characteristic hand worked thread detailing. A recent artist residency in India has clearly inspired some of Jane’s new pieces. It’s interesting charting artists’ new developments & influences.
The Radiance stand belonging to Hannah Nunn always delivers the goods - her hand cut paper light shades look great when displayed en masse…
…and we loved her new seed pod window hangings.
Ruth Green, who we’ve seen at GNCCF in previous years, also had some lovely new works…
…and she’s also branched out into illustrated books, notebooks & note cards.
With autumn setting in, Andrea Lord’s &made display offered some warm seasonal comforts…
…such as these gorgeous cushions & cosies.
As we mentioned earlier, it’s really exciting to discover new makers and their work…
…we’ll highlight just a couple who made an impact on us.
The first was Gemma Truman, whose hand-blown glass & seagrass hangings and vases are absolutely exquisite - they’re inspired by South African weaverbird nests. We also thought they were very reminiscent of those old fashioned glass fishing net floats.
Second was Louise Hibbert.
Her pieces have a natural feel and use subtle, earthy, yet striking colours.
As you can see from her salt & pepper mills, they’re organic, tactile and oh so beautiful - they just cry out to be picked up, handled and caressed.
The show runs till this Sunday, so visit if you can! We’ve only featured homewares in this post, but there’s also lots of jewellery and fashion on display… and all of it’s for sale… so go on, get your Christmas shopping done early!
We have a really fabulous book for today’s Bookmarks post.
It’s Menu Design in America, 1850-1985 by Steven Heller & John Mariani and edited by Jim Heimann.
The book charts the history of menu design in America in the 19th & 20th centuries.
The menus featured inevitably incorporate the evolution & development of food…
…but they also draw in American and social history, politics, immigration, civil rights, prohibition, social taboos & norms for various eras - some of which can be quite an eye opener.
Fans of graphic design and typography will also be in heaven!
There’s a broad subject overview at the start of the book followed by further insightful captions on each page.
They add details for specific venues or menus - artists/designers, who owned/frequented an establishment, its popularity, dates, details about the food - chefs, new introductions, where items may have been sourced etc etc.
In some cases, there are accompanying photographs of the actual restaurant locations, buildings, interiors and the diners themselves.
The menus are the real stars of this book of course. There are nearly 400 pages crammed full of fabulous examples - both the stunning covers and their menu contents will give hours of pleasure.
We’ve included lots of images for this post, but even this is only a small proportion of those contained within the book.
Art Nouveau to Art Deco, Jazz age to Space age - it’s all here!
The menus are sourced from hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, diners, steamships, cruise ships, trains & planes.
We know one thing though - after browsing this book for an hour we were starving!
Some of the menus had up to a hundred items to choose from.
There are familiar dishes such as steaks & burgers (done in a myriad of different ways of course).
Others have choices that were new to us - ‘stewed terrapin with hominy’, ‘fried smelts with figaro sauce’, ‘calfs head en tortue’.
There are enjoyable aspects to take from all the menus - our favourites in terms of design & artwork are those dating from the 1930s and the 1950s. There’s a few in this book we’d love to add to our collection.
We started acquiring vintage menus some time ago. In fact, we’ve blogged about the subject before.
We love both the artwork and browsing the dishes on offer. They can be stored in a folder, but also look great framed - and as you can see from the wonderful examples in this book, the designs can be just stunning.
So we were sold even before opening a page, but if you are a newcomer to the subject, this book can be enjoyed as pure eye candy or will provide a fascinating insight into the history of a nation through its culinary culture.
Mouth-watering stuff - we can highly recommend it!
Menu Design in America, 1850-1985 is also available from the H is for Home Vintage Design bookshops - UK & US
[Many thanks to Taschen for supplying this review copy]
These are the big eyes of our latest owl - in this case a pottery money box.
They never stay with us long as these feathered friends are consistently popular in our shop.
Whether in the form of money boxes, mugs, pot stands, textile prints, pictures or book illustrations.
We’ve blogged a fair few times about the great illustrator, Kenneth Townsend. He designed the cutest owl as part of his Menagerie series - apparently the owl was his favourite animal!
Another wonderful illustrator with a thing for owls was Celestino Piatti who once said, “You can draw an owl a thousand times, and never find out its secret”.
image credit: Fishink
We’ve had a quick trawl on the web for some more owls - here are some favourites:
image credit: Vintage Kids’ Books my Kid Loves
Wise Ol’ Canister, Orange: £118 - Anthropologie
Happy owl open edition print by Matte Stephens: $35 - Etsy
image credit: mmmcrafts
image credit: Shailesh Chavda
We have a regular book review feature on our blog, but today we’re looking at a magazine.
The biannual publication of Midcentury has recently been launched, so it’s especially nice to be able to cast our eye over edition number one.
It’s a subject close to our hearts too - namely Mid-Century Modernism.
We’ve been reading our copy over the weekend and have been thoroughly enjoying it.
Articles in this edition include an in-depth look at the ever-expanding Midcentury Modern Show and an interview with the founders & organisers, Petra Curtis & Lucy Ryder Richardson.
The Festival of Britain features prominently - both details of the original spectacular exhibition and current events to mark this, its 60th anniversary.
There’s a look at the hit TV show, Mad Men and its influence on the current Mid Century Modern renaissance.
Regular features are set to include the Buyer’s Guide to a design classic (the Eames rocker); Collector’s Perspective (the sculptures of Brian Willsher), Designer’s Eye (fashion designer, Margaret Howell’s choice of 3 fave MCM pieces)’ Curator’s Choice which highlights a current exhibition (Robin & Lucienne Day at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester) and Mid Century Home, (in this edition, a tour of Cathy Spooner & Peter Walls’ house in Crystal Palace, London).
There’s an excellent directory of specialist MCM stockists, designers & dealers.
Format wise, it’s between A4 and A5 - and there are 66 pages in all. A subscription costs £6.95 per year for two issues, £10.95 in Europe and £13.95 to the rest of the world. The price includes postage.
Hopefully this is the start of something great - so get your hands on a copy, have a browse and let them know what you think.
We bought a large quantity of vintage posters at auction recently…
… all the work of Frederic Henrion.
They have a wide range of dates and subject matter.
These examples were reprinted for an exhibition at Staffordshire Polytechnic in the 1980s. The Polytechnic was the first place to offer a graphic design course largely based upon the influence of Henrion.
They were reproduced in limited edition runs and many of them are actually signed by the artist.
F H K Henrion OBE was born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1914. After studying & working in Paris, he emigrated to England in 1939, adopting British nationality in 1946.
During the 1940s & 50s, he worked for advertising agencies and publishers - and was Art Editor of Contact and Futura magazines. In 1951 he established the design consultancy, Henrion Design Associates.
He produced designs for numerous organisations such as the Festival of Britain, London Transport, IBM, KLM, BEA, BOAC, the British Ministry of Information, the US Office of War Information, Olivetti and Tate & Lyle.
He was art director at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London during the 1950s. The ICA was a platform for the emergence of The Independent Group - and for the development of a widespread pop sensibility during the 1960s.
His work often used elements of photo montage and collage. He pioneered the use of surrealist juxtapositions in the language of advertising and visual communications in Britain.
He was a respected spokesperson for his profession and his work won many international awards. He was awarded an OBE for his contributions to the Festival of Britain pavilions.
He was an influential teacher who lectured at the Royal College of Art (1955-65); was President of Alliance Graphique Internationale and Master of Faculty at Royal Designers for Industry (1972-73); and was Leader of the Faculty of Visual Communication at the London College of Printing (1976-79). In 1982 he became consultant at Henrion, Lund and Schmidt - corporate identity specialists.
The FHK Henrion Archive & Research Library can be found at University of Brighton, Faculty of Arts’ Design Archives. A book of his designs (one of the popular Antique Collectors’ Club series) has recently been published and is available at Amazon UK & Amazon USA
We’ve started a Flickr group for sharing images of Henrion’s work - have a look and share any that you have!
We got very excited this morning when this large package arrived from the U.S.
We hadn’t ordered it… we’d won it!
It’s a fabulous prize from interior decorator/graphic designer Dee Adams, author of one of our favourite blogs, deedee9:14
The giveaway consisted of this cute little cloud & raindrops mobile from The Butter Flying Etsy shop and a framed poster designed by Dee herself.
We’ve found good homes for both. The cloud mobile is hanging from the kitchen window, watering the seedlings beneath - and Dee’s poster is now hanging in our bedroom. It’s a lovely illustration whatever the weather!
Having said that, it’s a very apt artwork for us - we live in Todmorden in the Pennines, one of the wettest places in the country!
We bought this vintage advertising poster some time ago and put it away…
…it’s now returned from the local framers and we’re very pleased with the result.
The poster is for Brock’s Fireworks and dates from the 1950s/60s - it would have been on display in a toy shop or newsagents.
The artist is D. Nockels and we love his illustration.
We’ll be adding the poster to the Child’s Play section of our shop sometime this week. We’re currently in the process of sorting & framing various vintage artworks that we’ve gathered over recent years - some of the other items include travel posters, film memorabilia etc, so watch this space!
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Not too many words this week - well… it is all about numbers!
Plenty of images though - showing numbers being used as decoration, their representation in print and some objects in which numbers are an integral part.
This charming children’s book is a collection of number rhymes & finger games.
How many of these do you remember?
This mouse one’s a teensy bit sad - it ends with no little mice left!
All illustrations by Denis Wrigley taken from One Two Three Four first published in 1970.
We picked up these wooden printing blocks some years ago, and have a large tray of them mounted on a wall. They have a really sculptural quality and we love the way light & shadow fall across its surface.
We found this lovely pack of old playing cards in a mixed box auction lot the other day.
When you think of items that require numbers to function, clocks would be top of most people’s list. Here are some nice examples that H is for Home currently has in stock or has sold recently.
We love these early pocket calculators with their red or green displays. They seemed so space age at the time!
Not forgetting telephones - push button and dial versions.
And then there are numbers used as pure decoration. The main photo at the top is a 1960s fabric design. And there’s this Carltonware money box, again from the 60s. We love the ‘groovy’ treatment that numbers got during this decade.
Hope you enjoyed today’s blog - we don’t think it’s going to be too hard for you to guess what ‘O’ will be for next week!
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You’ve got your wine, your beer, your mineral water…
…or if you’re lucky, a bit of fizz.
You’ve got your ice to keep it cool.
Now all you need is something stylish to put it in.
Step forward ICE BUCKET!
Made from all kinds of materials including glass, wood, plastic, stainless steel & silver - with shapes & designs too numerous to mention.
Some are big enough to plunge your whole bottle in - like this fantastic, 1960s yellow Cathrineholm number…
…others hold just enough cubes to keep that G&T at the optimum temperature.
Teak & stainless steel by Viners
left to right: Lundtofte, Crayonne & Stelton
We always have a few designs in stock, so if your cubes need a good home, check out the selection at H is for Home
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