Frozen Daiquiri, anyone?

Wow. They really knew how to illustrate books in 1967. Well, John Alstrop and Eric Hill did anyway.

Published by Determined Productions Inc, San Francisco, in 1967, Booze is an amazing little illustrated book of some fifty-odd cocktail recipes. I've no way of knowing if the two designer/illustrators sampled any (or all!) of the cocktails before putting their colourful pens to paper, but they certainly didn't hold back. The pages are filled with vibrant and humorous images in a wonderfully typical 1960s psychedelic style.

It's a lovely little book. And goes quite well with a quirky little drinks tray we found recently which probably dates from the same era.

Cheers.

André Hellé animals book from 1911

As well as my interests in pottery and glass, I do have a soft spot for vintage children's books. And I wanted to show you a good one I found recently. It's a wonderful book.

I picked up this vintage french children's book without knowing too much about it but the more I have looked into it, the more fascinating it gets. The book is Droles de Betes with words and illustrations by André Hellé. As far as I can discover, the book was produced in 1911 and that makes it all the more remarkable when you see the layout and the stylised, modernist style of illustration.

The first thing that strikes you about the book is its size, the book is roughly 17 by 12 inches (40x30cm), it's very big. The typography is beautifully done with hand-drawn text and titles, and the wording incorporates many quirky line drawings. The colour illustrations have been printed separately on white paper and tipped-in.

But it's the avant-garde style of the book that is so interesting. The animals are toy-like and so simplified. I imagine that this book must have looked very striking and innovative in 1911.

There are more excellent pages in the book and I'll show them in another blog-post soon.

There's more information on André Hellé on this blog by his admirers: André Hellé 

 

The talent of Charley Harper

I recently did a blog-post on the illustrations from a Mary Blair children's song book, remember this: Mary Blair book ?

Well, I was lucky enough to get hold of a copy of another superbly illustrated children's book and I couldn't resist sharing it with you too.

The book, a children's introduction to biology, was published in 1962 and it features the illustrations of the brilliant Charles Harper

The book is jam-packed with illustrations – these six scans are only a small sample. There's no need for too many words from me on the superb quality of the work, the pictures speak for themselves, but it's worth remembering that they were all produced long before the use of computers in illustration.

A vintage children's book with Mary Blair illustrations

This Sunday, I set my clock for an early start. Sunday is car boot sale day and I always look forward to rooting round all the stalls to see if there are any gems of pottery treasure for the Potshots collection.

This week, even though the weather was good for a change, there were no bootsale pottery bargains to be found. Normally this would be a disappointment – but not this week. Just as I was about to leave, I spotted this beautiful children's song book. It cost me £1. The book is wonderfully illustrated by Mary Blair. This edition was published by Paul Hamlyn in 1966 but the book has a copyright from 1955 to the Golden Press, inc. I would guess, therefore, that the illustrations were done sometime in the 1950s. And aren't they just superb? Here are some pictures of a few of the pages...