STUCK UP

When I was young, I had bedroom wallpaper similar to this, though rather less sophisticated (and probably cheaper)...

But before that, not having the money to redecorate the house into which we had just moved, my father improvised by carefully cutting out pictures from the back of Rice Krispies cereal boxes featuring 'Heroes of the West' and pasting them up over the existing – somewhat faded – floral design wallpaper...

I was reminded of this when I discovered (during our move year) that I own a set of unused vintage (c 1956) 'Walt Disney Nursery Decorations'...

These gummed cut-outs feature scenes from classic Silly Symphonies: Three Little Pigs, The Ugly Duckling and Little Hiawatha...

How lucky to have been a kid with these on your bedroom wall!

But then, lucky for me that these ones survived in tact and un-gummed for over fifty years!

You can see the whole set on my Decidedly Disney blog.

PICK OF THE PIX: GLASS GARDEN

Here are a trio of images I captured in 2005, when Dale Chihuly's 'Gardens of Glass' exhibition added new and rare species to the Palm House and various other locations in Kew Gardens...

You will find more of these fragile extravaganzas by Chihuly, along with some vitreous fantasies from Venice, in my flickr photoset, Glass.

THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE PUB-DOOR...

Spotted by Roger: 'The Gold Cup' public house in Ascot, which was closed when the landlord retired and, despite protests from CAMRA (The Campaign for Real Ale) the brewery decided to apply for planning permission for a housing development. The sorrowful sight of the once-convivial facade has been somewhat relived by an interesting addition to the boarded-up front door...

The work of a literate graffitist? Or knowing advice to passers-by from a seasoned explorer?

Who knows...

Of course, the first discoverer of Narnia, C S Lewis, was a man who was noted for enjoying a pint of good English ale, so maybe – just possibly – it's worth a try...

Next time you're passing, Roger, give the handle a bit of tug and see what happens. However, if it starts to open and you notice a few snowflakes drifting out, I'd check your travel insurance before going further...

DRAWN FROM MEMORY

Isn't it strange how a single image can evoke a whole chapter of past memories?

July 1959 and the ten-year-old Sibley received, as a birthday present, a book that was to become a much-loved and highly-treasured possession...

Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp, published by the British company Dean & Son of (if I'm not mistaken) Ludgate Hill, London.

The book was filled with what are now thought of as iconic images from the then newly-released Disney animated film...

 

 

Thus, long before I saw the movie, I knew the story  of the elegant Lady and her liaison with a mongrel from 'the wrong side of the tracks' and had all the key scenes by heart.

Then came that fatal day – I still shudder to recall it – when I came home from school to find that we had been visited by an aunt and uncle and their son and that my Mother had given my cousin my precious book to keep him amused and allowed him to carry it off...

Picture my shock! Imagine my despair! Visualise, if you will, the trauma: desperately trying to be 'grown up' and not show my inexpressible anger, my inconsolable grief at being parted from 'just a silly old children's book' that I had, apparently, 'outgrown years ago'!

It took me two decades (in those pre-eBay days) to find myself a replacement copy with which to assuage the gnawing canker of loss...

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was browsing through an animation auction catalogue when I spotted an item that was, according to the cataloguer, the original art for the cover of a Disney storybook based on Walt Disney's The Lady and the Tramp...

'Cover?' I snorted contemptuously, 'Pah!'

I knew exactly what it was: not the cover, but the end-papers to that most dearly-loved book, showing the titular characters and their canine neighbours, Trusty the Bloodhound and Jock the Scottish Terrier – along with a series of mini-sketches of key-episodes from the story linked by a trail of doggy paw-prints!

I should like to tell you that I bid on the item and successfully secured the item for permanent display on the walls of Chez Sibley, but, alas, I was out-bid and the picture is, even now, en route to another Disney dog-fancier!

But, hey, at least I know that it's out there somewhere – like a stray dog without a collar – and, who knows, one day our paths may cross again...

Meanwhile, I have been reacquainted with half-forgotten memories – happy and sad – from my childhood, that (as David sagely observed) probably explain rather a lot about my obsessive attitude towards my book collection...

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.

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!

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??

NOW I'M SIXTY-FOUR

So, now I really am...  

WILL you...?  Still...?

Please... 

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!

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!