I tried to do some research but failed to find much, so in the highly unlikely event of this blog sparking in you a sudden and massive interest in vintage ties, then this is probably the book you need, and the one from which I stole the genius blog title. Thankyou, Michael J. Goldberg. The book’s available from Amazon US.

So without any further ado, I give you: the ties! (Well, a very small selection of them anyway…)

Hmm, possibly my favourite..

First vintage tie he ever bought

Detail of reverse: 'Pipe Dreams by Wendy'

Another big favourite of mine

Like a lot of 1950s band names, birds seem to feature heavily in ties too.

One of his favourites, not one of mine. Not keen on the 3D effect from the drop shadow.

Love this one too - the illustration design is a bit Angie Lewin..

The colours in these are hand painted over a printed keyline

                                                                                                                                                                              

Two things got me thinking about copyright issues recently. One was that a friend of mine, Sian, from The Strawberry Card Company, had one of her designs lifted wholesale by someone in San Diego. (Either that, or the culprit is actually called ‘Dan Diego’, and that isn’t actually a typo…) Anyway, read about it here!

Please note that the following pieces of work have never been seen in the same room together:

Would the real Strawberry Design print please step forward? (The original is on the right, by the way...)

Then on the very self same day, I read on the BBC about Mark Coop who has, in an apparent effort to make himself less popular than a breakdancing porcupine at a naturist balloon modelling convention, registered a trademark against the Keep Calm And Carry On name on a certain range of products thereby restricting its commercial use by anyone he believes to be copying his company’s products.

Needless to say, this has put the litiginous cat amongst the furious pigeons, many of whom have been using the 1930s Ministry of Information propaganda slogan on everything from mugs to bags  to place mats and everything inbetween since its rediscovery in 2000. Examples can be seen here, as if you needed reminding:

Keep Calm and, um, Wipe Your Feet...?

No, I don't know why, either.

Not altogether surprisingly, an enthusiastically angry campaign has been mounted in opposition to Coop’s actions, led in part by Stuart Manley, owner of Barter Books, who found an original copy of the poster in his shop (most were destroyed at the end of the war). In the interest of fairness, you can read Mark’s defence of his actions here.

Stuart Manley with his framed copy of the original poster

It’ll be interesting to see which way this goes, especially for me as I’m
a) a designer, generally;
b) a designer who more specifically spent four years working part time for  the Civil Service; will any of my work be found in the bowels of a Government memory stick  70 years from now and plastered across merchandise the world over? I think ‘Leadership and Strategy for Efficient and Flexible Public Services in The Twenty First Century’ has a catchy ring, even if the mugs and tee shirts will have to be a bit, um, wider; and
c) a card designer, as nowhere has the phrase ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ (and a seemingly endless selection of clumsy variants) been more omnipresent than on the front of greetings cards.

Like most people, I loved it the first time I saw it. Five years down the line, it’s started to, shall we say, wear a bit thin… I may be longing in vain for its demise, however: as one trader told me at a huge trade show last month, “It still sells.” Clearly that unknown civil service designer didn’t get paid nearly enough…

So if we can’t get rid of the pesky thing, let’s at least end with some imaginative interpretations. It’s particularly interesting to see a message originally intended as being ‘from the King to his people’ now being used in some interesting ways to criticise the establishment…

available from http://www.stardustkids.co.uk

As seen at last week's Block The Bill demo against NHS privatisation

Available from http://www.bouf.com

and my personal favourite:

Carry on.

Cliqueyness, fierce brand loyalty, snobbery… all things to which I like to hope I don’t subscribe. It would seem, though, that thanks to one man, I’ve been doing all three for the past 20 years.

I’m a Mac Gal. I bought my first (second hand) Mac at the tender age of 20, and as such, am one of those rare 40 year olds who has never actually owned or even used a PC. I had one on my desk at a place I worked, but it was next to my Apple Mac G5 and just sat there looking ugly and beige and unfathomable. Just getting my email off it could get me into all kinds of trouble and invariably resulted in a call to the IT department… “Hello Sue – what’s that? You’ve touched your PC again?? *Sigh* Okay – we’re on our way up… “

My first Mac was an SE/30 (above), which looks now like a very early prototype for the iMac – tiny,  light and compact, the whole thing could be scooped up and moved around with one hand. Happily, I still have it. Its teeny-tiny screen was black and white, and it had less memory than a goldfish with early onset Alzheimers. If you planned to scroll from one side of a double page spread to another, it was advisable to pencil it into your diary. In spite of it’s shortcomings, though, I loved it: I loved the fact that the Apple face beamed reassuringly at me when I started up; I loved the cheery chime; I loved that there was one drive, right there, clearly visible on the pale grey desktop, and not 43 drives, dotted and hidden all over the place in a weird, ugly hierarchy. I loved it because everyone else had a PC, and I had a Mac.

With the advent of iPods and iPhones, it’s easy to forget that for years, Mac users were viewed with suspicion by the majority of people, hardly surprising given that they were the preserve of creative types in attention-seeking eyewear and casual footwear. And for our part, we viewed PC users with laughable contempt; these were people who had not yet Found The Way, and probably never would. I enjoyed being part of this exclusive club; I suppose I sold my soul to Apple pretty early on, possibly because it seemed like a brand that was still shooting from the hip. Gates was a geek; Jobs was a dude.

Suits vs Non-Suits http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/feature/The-IT-Guy-Mac-vs-PC

In his tribute to Jobs on the Creative Review blog Patrick Burgoyne says “We had Macs, the suits had PCs: they symbolised the great divide. They were ‘ours’ and, despite their faults, we loved them. Before iTunes and iPods, before the phones and the pads, we embraced Apple and we never let it go.”

This divide made itself rather apparent at university when I refused to do an exam on a PC and asked to be allowed to bring my Mac in. I was denied this as other students complained that this  ‘gave me an unfair advantage’ (ignoring the fact that working on an alien PC put me at a massive disadvantage).  Being a Mac person set me apart from my classmates who thought I had ideas above my station, and I can’t deny that this made me quite happy…

Credit: http://www.markstivers.com

So I suppose I have mixed emotions today, the day that Apple founder Steve Jobs has died. Part of me is glad that he finally got the world to see what they were missing out on by not using a Mac; the other part of me feels childish and petulant and cross. I want to tell all those ninnies waving their iPhones above their heads like cigarette lighters that jumping on the bandwagon in the past 5 years doesn’t make you Mac. Some of us were there 20 years ago, scrolling painfully across a grey, 6 inch screen, and doing it gladly, because the little pixelly face smiled at us and reassured us that we were in on the secret…

Cheers, Steve; s’long.

Anyway, a shortish one today:  I’ve been meaning to do it for a while and a visit to Habitat today reminded me, hence the sudden engagement of boot with bum.

On a recent trip to the Royal Festival Hall, I stopped by the Terrace shop to, um, have a look at the new items and not to straighten my cards up (ah-hem), and while I was there I had a good old nose around the newly-expanded shop. It’s full of lots of truly lovely things but my eye was nearly yanked out of its socket by this nest of  Ercol tables:

Arrrgh! Have you never heard of coasters??

Probably most famous for perfecting the steam bending of wood, Ercol exhibited at the Britain Can Make It exhibition of 1946 at the V&A Museum, and then again at the Festival of Britain at the Royal Festival Hall in 1951. According to Wikipedia, ‘Ercol’s mass-produced furniture found a ready market in post-war Britain, which demanded smaller pieces with simpler lines than their chunky pre-war counterparts.’

So were these cheeky walnut beauties original 1950s Ercol pieces I wondered, as I caressed their organic curves and wondered if I could reasonably fit the small one under a cardi in a Bag For Life? Well I can tell you, dear readers, that they are not! By happy coincidence, the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain coincides with the 90th anniversary of Ercol who are (happily for us) reissueing a range of their most iconic designs, a lot of which are available from the new retro renaissance shop of choice, John Lewis. Here are just a few pieces – click for a better look:

Ercol for John Lewis – Butterfly Chair

Ercol for John Lewis - Studio Couch

Ercol for John Lewis - Chiltern Coffee Table

Ercol have also reissued the iconic nest of tables in ‘a contemporary mix of rainbow hues’ but I’d quite like to have words with whoever picked them … from the top, the peach one must look like some kind of gland (*shudder*)

Ercol nest of tables, painted

And as if all this retro furniture loveliness wasn’t enough, Habitat have only gone and jumped on the 1950s  nest-of-tables bandwagon with their ‘Wilf’ range. They’ve chosen their colours a little more carefully than Ercol, and I like the fact that they’ve varied the shapes. The tapered legs and black edging really makes for a nice retro feel.

Habitat 'Wilf' table, large

Habitat 'Wilf' table, medium

Habitat 'Wilf' table, small

So there you go – I’ll gladly accept any of them as gifts, but remember, if it’s the Ercol you go for next Christmas, I prefer the plan walnut ones. You’ve been told. It’s Progressive Greetings Live next week so hopefully I’ll be back with tales of trade show shenanigans sometime after that. Adios!

PS. I completely forgot to post this lovely picture of another Ercol piece in the Royal Festival Hall shop, adorned with lovely cushions in limited edition Festival of Britain fabric designed for the anniversary. There’s anniversay wallpaper behind it too.

Well, last weekend I took part in my second Vintage and Handmade Fair in deepest South Gloucestershire. Organised and promoted for several years now by the tireless and wonderous Jayne and Michele, it was a gorgeously Springy, Eastery affair: you can look at my limp visual offerings below, or look here for some photos that do the job properly.

Brilliant bunting courtesy of lovely Linzi at Pretty Please Boutique on eBay

Fab hats from Clare at Daisy Daisy

Marriage has never looked so sinister....

Pom poms just arent on enough things in my opinion.

A fine example of vintage nipple tweaking.

Doggydoggies!

The singing ringing Easter tree, thankfully not guarded by a vicious Eastern German dwarf.

I love this - it was all knobbly too.

Brillant cat by Woo Gilchrist wearing a custom made cashmere sweater and a messenger bag! Too, too cute...

Woo, maker of cats, and lots of other stuff too: http://www.thedevilmakeswork.com

I hear on the vintage grapevine that some dastardly and unimaginative cads have been nicking the name so beware of cheap imitations – there is only one Vintage and Handmade Fair and it looks like this:

Today was an interesting one: in the morning, I finally decided to remove ostrichy-head-from-sand, face up to my pathological fear of spreadsheets and attend a cashflow seminar in a vague attempt to understand exactly how all those millions inexplicably end up as grubby coppers by the time they reach my account. The seminar itself was great – a teensy bit taxing (no pun intended) on the old grey matter, but very useful and I am now obscenely wealthy, on paper at least.

What made it really interesting, though, was that it took place on a large boat moored on the Thames at Temple, and the owner explained that part of the stabilisation mechanism had broken. This meant that as well as rising and falling, the boat also pitched from side to side and occasionally smacked quite violently into the pier to which we were (allegedly) moored. As a result,  just the words ‘Capital Asset’ and ‘Closing Equity’ are now enough to make me feel decidedly queasy… and all this on the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. How very apt.

Sinking ship.

Balance sheet. Now, who can see a connection between these two images?

A quick scuttle across Blackfriars Bridge took me to the National Theatre where I went to see Rockin’, an exhibition of photos taken on the British and American rockabilly scenes by Andrew Shaylor, a lot of them at The Rockabilly Rave (UK) and Viva Las Vegas (US). It was very odd to be at an exhibition featuring so many familiar faces… The book is available here.

© Andrew Shaylor

And finally (hang on in there – we’re nearly there), I skipped excitedly up the South Bank to check that my cards really were in the Royal Festival Hall shop and that I didn’t just dream it, and sure enough….

Me and Angie Lewin? Yeah, were like that now...

First off is this lovely and decidedly Art Deco-ey floral bedding (below) from Collier Campbell who are English sisters Susan Collier and Sarah Campbell. They’ve been ‘producing iconic hand-painted textiles since the 1960s’ it says here, but this is the first I’d seen of them. They’re available to buy at House of Fraser.

It brought to mind a few things, most obviously the ‘Bloomsbury Group’ style made famous by, amongst others, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell who lived and worked at Charleston House in the 1930s. The yellow fabric (below) was designed by Grant; the other images are from the Charleston website:

The second thing it reminded me of (she said, modestly) was my own design for the Floradeco range of cards:

I wrestled with this design for weeks before realising that by adding a folksy, Romany feel to it, I could get away from what had been until then a very clunky Art Deco pastiche. Maybe I had the Bloomsbury thing in the back of my mind somewhere?

I think that’s all for now: I think my new style is going to have to be Less Is More or Little and Often if I’m going to post more than once a month….

Thought I’d end with this nice abstract pattern that, in shape and colour, certainly tips its hat to the 1930s:

Who says the Waterloo and City line can’t be inspirational? Blurred, yes, but inspirational nonetheless.

Carry on.

Mothering Sunday started off as a religious celebration, honouring the Virgin Mary and your ‘mother’ church (the main church of the area).  Young people who were in service away from home were given a day off to visit this mother church, and their families; they would pick wild flowers along the way to place them in the church or to give them to their mothers as gifts.

If you’re starting to feel a bit queasy, you’ll be relieved to hear that secularism  and commercialism soon raised their disreputable heads, as some of the following demonstrate in admirably gaudy fashion…

This lovely specimen is from http://www.millyanddottie.com and those colours are giving me some filthy ideas, I don't mind admitting...

Say you care with bindweed.

Kittens? Check. Bows? Check. Nauseating quantites of sugar pink? Check.

'So let's get this straight - you swapped your sister for the dog...?' Ah, they weren't laughing 15 years later when she was still missing.

Cute 1950s die-cut card, although I bet it fell over every time anyone opened the door.

This is just lovely, and I can't think of anything rude to add.

A rather sombre one, this... is she in a retirement home?

Love this one - fairground typography, an anchor... ah, surely enough to bring a tear to the eye of any seafaring, carney mother...

Not so mad about the main image (are those forecourt carnations?), but love the little deco flower motifs around this

Treads a fine line between cute and sick-making but comes out on top, I feel.

This Mothering Sunday, why not take some psychotropic drugs?

I know, I know, it's a book cover and not a card but really, how could I leave it out?

This is the kind of thing that makes me warm to the 1960s...

"Take a letter, Wifey, then get in that kitchen and make my dinner while I slap your tush!"

"Mommy - you used to beat me with a big wooden brush, but my therapist says I didn't mind..."

Neal and Steve are one person, but the therapist is working on that too.

And if that lot hasn’t reminded you it’s Mother’s Day this Sunday, then nothing will.

So The Royal Festival Hall has featured in my life for two extremely good reasons just lately. First off, I got a call from the buyer at the South Bank Centre asking if she could place an order so Pennychoo cards should now be in the shops inside the hall itself and the one on the terrace (eeeeeeeeeeeeh!)

The Royal Festival Hall is of course where the Festival of Britain was held in 1951, hence it being a tad iconic for a retrophile like me. It was (says Wiki)
“…an attempt to give Britons a feeling of recovery and progress and to promote better-quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities following the war. (It) also celebrated the centenary of the 1851 Great Exhibition.” It was described as “a tonic for the nation”.

(I can already hear the jaunty-yet-stirring string music and the cut-glass BBC announcer, can’t you?)

Official programme, just 2/6 to you

Turns out my dad went there as a young man and I didn’t find out until after he’d died. I wish I’d had a chance to ask him what he, as an eager and newly-qualfied building contractor, made of the 300 foot high steel Skylon?

Oooh, George - innit enorrrmous!?

This year marks 60 years since the 1951 Festival (as you’ll see by the all-new, updated logo complete with the inevitable sponsorship carbunkle), so how appropriate that this is the year that Wayne Hemingway moves his  Vintage festival from Goodwood to the Royal Festival Hall and the South Bank.

From July 29th – 31st, Vintage “…will celebrate musical, fashion, film, art, design and cultural lineages, from the 1920s to the 1980s, and offer a glimpse of where we go from here.”

Which brings me neatly  to the second reason that the Royal Festival Hall has featured happily in my life of late – I’ve only gone and flipping won tickets for it!! Yes, through the simple yet humiliating act of revealing (in public) my first ever record purchase, I won access for two to all three days of retro frolicks!

'I say, jolly well done you! Hip hip hurrah!' © 2010 Vintage at Goodwood

So extreme smugness all round at Pennychoo Towers just now which is only mildly tainted by being publicly ostracised for having bought Jona  Lewie’s Stop The Cavalry from Woolworths (Cannock) in December 1980…

I’m off to try and salvage my reputation – I may be some time. Until the next time, dear reader…

I had thought I might open up a discussion this week about the epitaxial growth and structure of metal overlayers of oriented substrates and how I might visually represent this in a commercially viable range of birthday cards…  But then I started to notice that my phone’s been getting quite heavy of late, and a bit of exploration revealed that I’ve got loads of photos on my memory card! Seems the pesky blighter starts storing them there when The Other Place It Stores Them gets full – and I had no idea!

So I’ve just spent an amusing half hour downloading and sorting through them and I thought it might be good (ie very easy) for me to post a few of the more ‘interesting’ ones and call them ‘a blog entry’!

There is some method in my laziness, however, as I do tend to snap stuff that I find mildly interesting and/or stuff that will give me ideas, so assume the brace position, and prepare yourself for a visual trip into the (frequenly mundane) mind of the phone-wielding retrophile…

A typeface that quietly suggests 1930s officialdom and all the tedium and restraint inherent therein. Take a letter, would you Miss Flange....?

From the sublime to the ridiculous: not sure who does Ridleys packaging design, but I wish it was me. I'd buy the empty box.

Bought this for my first trade show.

Then I bought this one aswell. I was a bit nervous.

Midwinter dinner set - £20. Yes, you may hate me. I understand.

Sauce boat... very sculptural... gorgeous colour... yes, yes, I did say £20... yes, for the whole lot...

Pattern detail. Okay, I'll stop now.

Appalling photo, sorry, of a great logo on the sole of a shoe in our local cobblers.

Pete playing Russian roulette with a lovely vintage tie and a very contemporary fry up.

Not at the end of the pier, sadly, but at the end of a field at a hotrod event last summer.

It's only just occurred to me that I didn't go on this, and I can't for the life of me imagine why..

And last, but definitely not least – I spotted this fantastic wallpaper in a shop window and have no idea what it is. Anyone?

So there you have it – and if you found those boring, you should see the ones that ended up on the virtual cutting room floor, including one of a nasty blister, one of some comfy-looking Clarks shoes (no connection with the blister one, incidentally) and about 18 of the floor/my shoes/my lap, etc.

Thanks for looking! Be sure to drop on by again, y’hear?