Handlebars and moustaches

I found this lovely photograph at Kempton Antiques Fair last month, I was saving it for a special occasion. Happy Birthday Bicycle Boy!

Car Boot snapshots.

It was the local car boot fair on Sunday, always an enjoyable feast of memorabilia, tales of objects old and worn, meeting good friends and drinking tea from a polystyrene cup.

X

For R x

1907

I found the manual for my 19o7 Singer sewing machine at Kempton Antiques Market last week. The stall holders were packing up, I had spent all my cash on a wonderful book (I will save that for another post!) and I saw this crumpled beauty on a table and just had to ask how much it was for curiosity sake and was told to take it for free! Now I can find out how to use all those odd attachments that came with the machine. I do love this image on the back cover most of all. Click on the image to see it in all its' glory.

Enquire within upon everything

" Whether you wish to model a flower in wax; to study the rules of etiquette; to serve a relish for breakfast or supper; to plan a dinner for a large party or a small one; to cure a headache; to make a will; to get married; to bury a relative; whatever you may wish to do, make or to enjoy, provided your desire has relation to the necessities of domestic life, I hope you will not fail to 'ENQUIRE WITHIN'." Published in 1884, London.

Inside the first page are 2 hand-written recipes from 1884, one for marmalade and the other for tea cakes.

Books

This is a collection of books I have acumulated over the last few months from car boot fairs and charity shops. I plan to use some of them in my work, the ones that are in bad repair. You can see a list of titles and dates here.

Happy Birthday

Felicitations on your day Mrs Emma x

LONDRES et ses environs

Delphiniums For Everyone

Men with moustaches

Henry Death

Bon Anniversaire

Rook

The Man Who Didn't Wash His Dishes

The Man Who Didn't Wash His Dishes, by Phyllis Krasilovsky, illustrated by Barbara Cooney. Published 1962.

Hacker record player

Love this instuction - when playing fasten lid for good bass reproduction.

On the way home from the shops I spied this on the top of a skip, I managed to drag it out of the skip and balanced it on my bike. It is extremely heavy. The plug has been removed but I think it may be in working order.

Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne

Curiouser and curiouser!

I found this well-loved edition of Alice in Wonderland at the car boot, it is a bit tattered and has some colouring in of the b/w illustrations but not a bad find for 50p. It was published in 1933 with illustrations by D.R.Sexton. Susan Sanford over at Art Spark Theatre has a great series of images inspired by Alice in Wonderland and also this wonderful link to Jan Svankmajer and Tom Waits on youtube.

Night Dress

The cameo contains strange flowers that look like a combination of real dried flowers with hand made felt petals and a tiny spider that must have been in the flowers.

Cameo

hearts and thrift

Here are some fabric hearts which I made earlier this year with a beautiful photograph album from 1892. Even though the photographs have all been removed the book retains a sense of history.

Venus perfect pencils

Venus perfect pencil tins. The tin on the right belonged to my Mum when she was at art school in the 60's, the other one I found at a village fair. It made the perfect present for a friend who loves to draw. There are lots of birthdays this month. Happy Birthday to all those Librans out there.