CORONATION TIMES

In 1953, the BBC's official magazine, Radio Times, marked the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II with an ornately-decorated cover by Eric Fraser, one of Great Masters of line illustration and a regular contributor to the pages of Radio Times, specializing in creating arresting illustrations for audio broadcasts among them productions of Shakespeare's plays, poetry, religious and philosophical topics as well many of the world's most celebrated classics – including towards the end of his career, the BBC's 1981 dramatisation of The Lord of the Rings. 

Eric Fraser's cover for the Queen's Coronation features traditional heraldic imagery and is a masterpiece of elegant design...

 

Seventy years on, the current issue of Radio Times marks the Coronation of King Charles III with a design by Peter Horridge clearly is an homage to Fraser in that he  uses the same heraldic beasts but which, nevertheless, is much planer, although equally elegant. 

Peter is a designer and illustrator with a great gift for calligraphy and calligraphic design. To my mind, this image, with its lightness and airiness, manages to sensitively unite the archaic traditions of ceremonial with the King's desire to be viewed as a 'modern monarch'. The incorporation of a window and, below, arches suggests the venue for the Coronation, Westminster Abbey...

 

Peter Horridge was also responsible for the rather more formalized image (well, actually, a logo) created as a symbol of the Coronation as a participant in the creative collective of Sir Jony Ive's LoveFrom, [Note: One word, two caps and a terminal comma].

 

 

This was one of several Royal commissions, others include the seal of Terra Carta launched by the former Prince of Wales at COP26 in 2021 as a mandate that puts sustainability at the heart of the private sector. 

 

Here's a further glimpse of some of Peter Horridge's other designs. You will find many more by exploring the Portfolio on his website.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

POST-SCRIPT: At the time of writing this blog post I was unaware that Peter Horridge had written about his commission to design the Radio Times cover for the Coronation issue. I'm pleased that I wasn't entirely amiss in comparing his cover with that created 70 years ago by Eric Fraser...

 

BELIVE IT OR NOT...

FIFTY-ONE days to Christmas! How do I know? The first of the big store Christmas commercials have debut! For example, in a year when – to be fair – there has been so much about which to be doubtful, Lidl have come up the slogan:    

                    LIDL, A CHRISTMAS YOU CAN BELIEVE IN!

I wonder what sort of a Christmas you can't believe in?

Maybe one featuring the story of a young, heavilly pregnant girl and her husband, finding themselves homeless in a strange city on a night in the bleak mid-winter...?

[Illustration: Lesley Fotherby; Sibley/Weeks Collection]

SCREWING AROUND

Possibly the funniest – and certainly the riskiest – advertising strap-line seen in a while...

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS...

Ghosts of Christmas Past: how much lower our expectations were (and how easily pleased we were) back then...

CHRISTMAS WITH THE STARS

Recruiting the stars to sell Christmas is nothing new as these vintage advertisements clearly show. The one significant difference is that 'back then' most of them were pushing cigarettes!

A spot of alturism amongst the commercialism...

And something for when the festivities are over...

HOLEY PRODUCTIVE

And here's what goes on at a Polo factory – courtesy of Aardman Animations and the voice of Wallace, Peter Sallis...

WOOLY THINKING

Don't you just love Vintage Ads?

What can one say? Other than to wonder whether this 1940s ad for Jester Wools was the origin of that old joke:

"My mother made me a homosexual!"

"If I give her the wool, will she make me one, too?"

TOO PERSONAL

Apart from marvelling at technology that can create such a cleverly personalised sales-ad...

...I would like to advise my friends that a green jumper with snowflakes, jolly Santas, candy-cane trimming and my name on it is absolutely NOT on my Christmas wish-list!

Just thought I'd mention it now...

TEA FOR FEW

There was a surprisingly low submission for our latest caption competition. Possibly this novelty (like the ad that was the subject on this occasion) has passed it Best Before Date; or, maybe (as one of our regular entrants suggests in a couple of his captions) it was down to an absence of scantily-clad young men in the picture. Whatever the reason, there submissions were few but – needless to say – of an excellent calibre!

Here's the picture you were asked to provide some dialogue for...


And here's what folks came up with...

THE WINNERS!

FIRST PLACE

Andy J Latham:

"It's alright Doreen, my husband will clean it up!"

SECOND PLACE

Roger:

"You always did have a heavy hand with pastry dear,
but your rock cakes have excelled themselves this time!"

THE WORTHY RUNNERS-UP
(in alphabetical order)

Boll Weavil:

"Good heavens! It's a WOMAN on the Sibley blog!

Aunts Maud and Marge have different reactions to being asked to wear gentleman's undergarments – the traditional apparel for models in the caption competition.

Fans hear the news of Titus Groan's success.

"You can hardly taste the weedkiller dear!"

Lo:

"I think they could have demonstrated 'resists stains' in some better way don't you?"

SCB:

Woman on left to woman on right: "I told you eating more than twelve rum balls would make you tipsy!"

Suzanne:

"Oh, my gosh! This blue-screen is dry-clean only!"

Congratulations to the winners
and thanks to everyone who took part!

GAY-IT-YOURSELF

I bet his shirt came from Austin Reed!

TEA-TIME TALK

Back by popular demand (one of you asked for it - and you know who you are!) it's time for another Sibley-blog––

CAPTION COMPETITION!

As the tea table with its plates of fancies goes flying, what are these charming, 1950s, Grafton-fabric-wearing, ladies saying or thinking...?


Your suggestions via 'Comments' below.

Closing date for submissions: 26 February 2012; the results shortly thereafter.

AUSTIN REED, OUT-FITTERS

After that unintentionally ambiguous Damart advertisement, I was interesting to discover that an emporium once noted for its refined and conservative taste and (in the Gents Department) unquestioned machismo...


...was unwittingly pushing at the closet door back in the 1950s!

WINTER DRAWERS ON

Tonight, the temperature is just 1 degree and this is a vintage Damart advertisement.

Any further comment would be superfluous...

GIVE AND TAKE

If we really MUST have Christmas commercials in November, I could wish they were all as good as this one...

And here's the 'Making of' video...

TONE DEAF

Good to see that one of our former Prime Ministers is still gainfully employed...

ALICE AFORETHOUGHT

July 4th has another claim to fame apart from being American Independence Day (greetings to all my American readers!) because one-hundred-and-forty-nine years ago, today, Charles Dodgson, a mathematics don from Christ Church, Oxford, took three little girls on a river picnic and, as they rowed, began spinning a tale of a little girl called Alice who followed a white rabbit with a watch, fell down a rabbit-hole and found herself in a place that could only be described as a land of wonders...

The book, published two years later in 1864 under the pen-name of Lewis Carroll, was illustrated by the great British Victorian cartoonist, John Tenniel (resulting in images that are, in the estimation of many, inseparable from the text), but countless other artists have since depicted Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, among them, in 1946, Mervyn Peake and, as we are currently marking the centenary of that man's birth, here are a few of his strikingly original Alice images...

Striking because Alice is so much a child of our time, as opposed to Tenniel's nineteenth century child; striking because the White Rabbit looks genuinely harried about being late, the Queen's Footman is truly a fish out of water, the Hatter and Hare (and probably the Dormouse too, if he were awake) are clearly dangerously unhinged, the Jabberwock is not a foe to be taken lightly by any beamish boy, the Walrus is accompanied by a carved-wood carpenter and Alice wears an ivory chess-piece crown and holds us with eyes that have unquestionably beheld wonders...









And, finally, on this frabjous day, here's a commercial for a French academic-support organisation, Acadomia, that speculates on how the wild nonsense of Mr Carroll's imagination may have had its beginnings...

Illustrations: © The Estate of Mervyn Peake

BANGERED TO RIGHTS

A friend in The Magic Circle e-mailed me recently, saying: "Put me out of my misery! Is that you on the sausage stall in the Churchill [car insurance] advert where he takes part in a tug-o-war? It certainly looks like you!"

You can see the commercial in question on YouTube and here's a screen-grab of the guy on the sausage stall...


So, what do you think? Is that just a Sibley look-alike? Or is it actually me doing a bit of sneaky cookery practice for Come Dine with Me?

FOOTBALL CRAZY

There's no escaping it: the 2010 FIFA World Cup starts today and whilst I realise that, for millions, this is going to be a month-long ecstatic orgy of footie, I'd ask the media to spare a thought for those benighted souls such as myself who simply cannot - however hard we try - identify with Bill Shankly's famous quote: "Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you it's much more serious than that!"

Certainly that seems to be the case with those global sponsors for whom, for the next few weeks, football represents a serious commercial investment...

And since Signor Ronaldo also has a sponsorship deal with Armani...

...we oughtn't to be surprised if manufacturers of intimate bodywear weren't also providing us with a sporting excuse for keeping an eye on the ball...