Saturday 27 July 2013

THE WACKY WORLDS OF WILLIAM HEATH ROBINSON

One of my very favourite artists is William Heath Robinson...

Not only was he among the greatest of great 20th Century book illustrators he was also a cartoonist of inspired wit and rare inventiveness, most celebrated in popular culture and destined to be remembered with affection for years to come as the creator of hundreds of gloriously bizarre and beautiful contraptions and contrivances that have carried the artist's name into dictionaries and everyday conversation whenever the need arose for a term to describe any kind of implausible device or construction...


The secret of Writing of his much-loved inventions, Heath Robinson said: "Whatever success my drawings have had was not only down to the fantastic machinery and devices, and to the absurd situations, but to the style in which they were drawn. This was designed to imply that the artist had complete belief in what he was drawing.... He was seeing no joke in the subject matter. In fact, he was part of the joke!"



Less well-known to some are Heath Robin's entrancing illustrations, fpund in various vintage magazines...


 ...and in works by Shakespeare and Kipling, Hans Andersen, Charles Kingsley and Walter de la Mare...


...as well as his own stories, Bill the Minder and Uncle Lubin...



Many of his most extraordinary compositions using bold contrasts of silhouette, detailed cross-hatching and dramatic areas of white space in which create imagery of arresting theatricality...

 

The exciting news is that The William Heath Robinson Trust, a registered charity established to preserve and manage a collection of Heath Robinson’s work including over 500 pieces of original art work and to promote the artist's reputation, is working to found a William Heath Robinson Mueseum at West House in the London suburb of Pinner, an area in which Heath Robinson once lived.


Following a successful bid for Heritage Lottery Funding, the Trust has now embarked on fourteen months of development: working up detailed designs for the building, a permanent exhibition and the way the museum will operate. They will also need to have secured £500,000 of partnership funding by the end of the development period.

You can read about plans for the museum and see how you can help in bringing them to fruition, here.

I hope this great project gathers all the support in order to enable more and more people to celebrate and enjoy the unique worlds of William Heath Robinson.



Saturday 20 July 2013

SPLASHING OUT!

Spotted by Sheila in the grounds of the Wycliffe Centre...



Bearing in mind that The Wycliffe Centre is headquarters of the Wyncliffe Bible Translators, one can't help but wonder to what levels of stress – and, as a result, dark deeds – people are driven by translating the scriptures!


Tuesday 16 July 2013

RISK FACTOR

A souvenir from my recent sojourn in hospital...


That sounds OK, but what about the .001% of germs that strike within 9.59 seconds??

Sunday 14 July 2013

NOW I'M SIXTY-FOUR

So, now I really am...  

WILL you...?  Still...?


Please... 

Thursday 4 July 2013

GLEAMS FROM A GOLDEN AFTERNOON

The Fourth of July...

The day that saw the birth of American Independence – and the birth of one of our best loved literary characters – Alice in Wonderland, whose topsy-turvy adventures began on this day in 1862, when the Revered Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (later better known as 'Lewis Carroll') took a boating trip in Oxford with a college friend and the three daughters of Dean Liddell of Christ Church.

Dodgson whiled away the afternoon by telling the three girls a fantastical story – with a heroine named after the middle sister. Subsequently written down as Alice's Adventures Under-ground it was eventually published in 1865, with John Tenniel's famous illustrations, as .
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Here's my rather particular copy of that book...


...signed by Lewis Carroll on the half-title page to Ada Chambers Butler, another little girl that, as he recorded in his diaries, he encountered at Margate on 10 October 1870...


And here's my copy of a lovely volume, The Lewis Carroll Picture Book, edited by Dodgson's nephew, Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, and published in 1899, the year after Carroll's death...


...not sure what the Gryphon is doing chatting with the White Rabbit (or maybe it's the mad March Hare) but the nicest thing is that, inside, it is  signed by Alice Pleasance Hargreaves –– Alice Liddell as was, the original inspiration for this now so famous story...


HAPPY FOURTH of JULY!

Tuesday 2 July 2013

THEY'VE GOT ME COVERED

True it's not Vanity Fair or GQ Magazine, but amongst the select readers of The Magic Circular, the magazine of The Magic Circle, I've finally arrived and have a cover profile to prove it!