We’ve only just discovered the work of Brighton-based illustrator, Sean Sims.
We had a hard time choosing which of his designs to highlight, they’re all so amazing! He’s got a great style, colourful palette and lighthearted and humorous approach to his subject matter.
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?
We’re through the holiday season and a couple of days into 2012 but we wanted to share this festive peacock illustration with you. It’s a digital illustration by the very talented Galia Bernstein. She’s a Brooklyn-based illustrator, a textile designer and an amateur ceramic artist and printmaker and blogs about her work here. She has even adorned walls in her home with her beautiful birds!
This print (although without the Christmas bauble in its mouth) is available from her Etsy shop.
I love this bold and funky, vintage-inspired illustration. She was produced by Malika Favre, a London-based, French designer, for Wallpaper Magazine.
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]
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!
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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