Y is the Yak?

I've been meaning to do a post for ages about these little children's ABC books. There are six in total and each one is 9cm square. They don't have a date anywhere on them or any publishing details, but I think they must be American and date from around or just after World War II.

One reason for dating them to WWII is the high number of warlike images -- you would never get T is for Tank and U is for U-boat nowadays.
     In fact there's a strong undercurrent of foreboding throughout all the books. A fireman tackles a blaze, a nurse runs to help someone.

Watch out, that policeman's already swinging his truncheon, and you'd better know what jail looks like, son.

Even that staple of children's dictionaries, the animals, look either malicious or forlorn. Did you ever see a more dispiriting monkey?
     The compilers of these little books have really tried to stretch their young readers' vocabularies. You can forget about X is for Xylophone and Z is for Zebra. The zebra already made an appearance as Q is for Quagga, and as for X is for Xerus -- huh??

Well I really love these books. I've long collected children's dictionaries for the very reason that the images in them are often at odds with the innocence of the concept. I had a long-running project to make narrative stories using just three pictures from these dictionaries -- a hand ringing a doorbell, a woman stepping out of the shower, a candle burning. The more grand guignol I could make the stories, the better. Perhaps I'll do a post on these one day. They were fun, but perhaps not to everyone's taste!
     I also like the typography on the covers of these little books. There's a big letter on the front and back of each, making 12 letters out of 26 possibles. I've made a few more of the easier missing ones using Photoshop, but there's still only a ...

... of words you can make. But it would be a nice typography project when I have more time!!!

Collaged notebook

I just finished this A5 collaged notebook. This is the front and back. It uses a lot of images that I've been keeping and that I'm particularly fond of, such as the girl with the balloons and the rollerskating girl. Also two pictures of myself as a child. The Bind-it-all binder makes such books very do-able.

Threads of Feeling

screen grab from Threads of Feeling website

I've been meaning to mention Threads of Feeling for ages. It's an exhibition that's been on at the Foundling Museum in Coram's Fields, London, and I see that it's just finished (sorry for bad timing). But my post is really about the associated website, www.threadsoffeeling.com.
   This is a really beautiful website that records the scraps of fabric that women put in with their babies when they left them at the Foundling Hospital at the end of the eighteenth century. When the babies were left, the Hospital renamed them and sent them into the countryside to be nursed. Effectively their links to their mothers were broken, except for these little pieces of cloth, which could be matched to those kept by the mothers, if they were ever in a position to come back for their children.

screen grab from Threads of Feeling website

Here's is a lovely article from the Guardian that explains in more detail. The exhibition and website were put together by Professor John Styles at University of Hertfordshire where I work.

Tove's Summer Island

Tove Jansson's niece Sophia on the island with her grandmother (Tove's mother) in 1968

This post is for MMMC, who loves the Moomins.
     I tidied up my 'office' at the weekend and found an article I'd saved from the newspaper about Tove Jansson's real Summer Island, Klovaharum, where she spent three months every summer. The island is far out in the Gulf of Finland and is so beautiful I can hardly bear it.

Klovaharum is circled, bottom left

I found this video of it on YouTube:

Tove's connection with the island is complicated -- there are actually two different islands (near each other) that she went to and two different houses on the larger, earlier island (which is where I think most of the stories in the Summer Book were first experienced for real):

The first, bigger island

Inside the little house on Klovaharum

You can go and stay on Klovaharum in Tove's house (the only house on what is little more than a rock). I can't find any info about booking it, though.

This is now the destination I'll imagine when I can't sleep.
Here's a longish biographical piece on Tove Jansson.

Junk jewelry

Proof, if any were needed, that I have a mental age of about 11. I've had a lovely time today making silly necklaces and bracelets out of all the bits of junk I've picked up off beaches and pavements. I fear I'm even mad enough to wear some of it...

A charm bracelet and a necklace

crude plastic bits of stuff

A reflector and a hunk o' metal

Book backlog

Bookmarks at the ready

Most people who love to read have a tantalising pile by their bed of books waiting to be read. So do I, but it's getting out of hand...

This is my corner of the bedroom. We had various cupboards and shelves designed into our bedroom when we moved in. I thought I had been clever in having not only a shelf above the bed but a special little extra shelf recessed by the side of it. Evidently this wasn't enough to contain the creeping stacks, which are becoming reminiscent of a secondhand bookshop (could be worse).

But how am I ever going to read all these books and watch all these movies? Given I'm already committed to two a month (outside of these) to review plus a book-group book, realistically I can only read about one a week of these, if that, so this is several years worth... Help!
     Does anyone else have similar backlogs?

The Museum of Everything #3

Yesterday afternoon, the four of us headed into London to catch the very last day of the Museum of Everything (#3) which, as far as I can tell, is a sort of pop-up museum which has previously popped up at Tate Modern, and somewhere else too. This was the third instance of its popping up.

Sir Peter Blake, inveterate collector (courtesy Tateshots)

The Museum was housed in some sort of empty warehouse just behind Primrose Hill, that most chichi of London villages. It consisted of wonderful items of kitsch and folk art from Sir Peter Blake's personal collection and other things curated by him -- Punch and Judy puppets, cigarette silks, circus posters, stuffed animals, fairground art, outsider art -- a great conglomeration of mad-looking things which have informed Peter Blake's art throughout his career.

The way through the exhibits was winding and myseterious. You had to push through heavy plastic slats at various points, and eclectic music came from unpredictable places. When we came to the largest space, an Ethiopian musician was playing whilst a burlesque-style dancer did the hula-hoop.

courtesy Tateshots

It was hard for David and I not to envy the sheer quantity of objects. We feel we are fellow collectors of this kind of stuff but clearly we were out of our league here. David once had the immense luck to visit Peter Blake in his studio for work and he cherishes the time he spent with this artist whose work we admire so much.

courtesy Tateshots

Well, at least we got to see it just before it closed. There was a great atmosphere and a sense of event, even if it seemed to be largely populated by a particular breed of affluent and jolie-laide North London types (both male and female -- not sure there is a masculine version of 'jolie-laide').

courtesy Tateshots

Afterwards we went out into the late afternoon drizzle and wandered up and down the very posh row of shops, thinking we might go for a cup of tea in, say, the Russian Tearooms or Primrose Patisserie, but all tables were already filled with the rosy-cheeked people of the Hill. So we just went home and had hot-cross buns at our own table.

courtesy Tateshots

We were very glad we made the effort to go, though.