Chasing Down the Perfect Card
The affenpinscher card from the Rifle Paper CoIt was my sister’s birthday recently. I have this unfortunate reputation with my family of always giving gorgeous greeting cards, which creates a bit of pressure if I’m in a hurry.
For Star’s birthday card I went to a usually reliable giftware and stationer’s, but was daunted when I just could not hit upon anything I really loved. Aggravatingly, they had plenty of gorgeous Christmas cards. And then I spotted it (no pun intended) in the bottom row. An array of illustrated dogs from the Rifle Paper Co, and one that looked very like my sister’s moodle dogs.
Rifle Paper Co is based in FloridaThe Rifle Paper Co was founded by Anna and Nathan Bond, with Anna as illustrator and designer, and her husband acting as business manager. Anna’s whimsical and nostalgic style incorporates hand-painted illustrations and lettering. They pride themselves on high quality stock and printing methods, and believe that ‘life’s personal stories and moments are best told through the gift of a hand-written note or card’.
“It’s Pepito!” Star exclaimed in delight when she opened her envelope. “No it’s not,” her husband pointed out. “He would never wear pink polka dots, let alone a bow*. It’s Madeleine.”
Success! My reputation has not been sullied.
*Except when he was tortured in his youth by one of their daughters.
Images from the Rifle Paper Co
A Fashionable Hallowe’en
OH! How much do I adore these vintage 1920s Hallowe’en costumes? So many of my favourite stripes and pompoms are featured. The designs are rather interesting with their Oriental flavour too – Chinoiserie was popular during the Art Deco period. I find them so much more interesting than modern costumes, which tend to be a bit garish for my taste. Amazingly, these 1920s costumes were intended to be made from crepe paper.
The illustrations, by Barbara Crews, are pretty delicious too. Now here is a party I would love to go to.
Illustrations found via RetroGypsy.
Franz Roh, Magic Realist
Total Panic, 1937
Franz Roh, by Lucia Moholy 1926Unlike the sometimes brashly coloured collages cut from modern magazines today, the images Franz Roh (1890–1965) created are masterful subtleties in warm greys and olive. Somehow this restrained palette lends a more disturbing air to his compositions. Inspired by Max Ernst’s Surrealist collages, Roh pasted together nineteenth-century engravings, excising them from the stolid gravity of the middle-class and casting them into an avant-garde world of whimsy.
Roh was a German art historian and critic of avant-garde film and photography. He began his career as a freelance writer and art critic, and when the Nazis forbade him to continue this work, with the encouragement of László Hoholy-Nagy, he turned to experimental photography.
Orchid Thief, 1935
He Handles the Clay-Toned Boat, 1945
Bride of the Winds, 1930Loathing photography that was simply representational, he often used a combination of techniques, such as multiple and negative printing, collage and photograms to create his fantastic and sometimes disturbing imagery.
It was he who coined the term ‘magic realism’ in a different sense from today’s accepted literary usage: referring to art style the New Objectivity. In his terminology, Magic Realism was related to Surrealism, though in distinct difference, it focussed on the object and its actual existence in this world, rather than the subconscious reality that the Surrealists explored.
After the war, Roh resumed his critical and academic career, and only publicised his photographic work near the end of his life. They still manage to surprise and fascinate today.
Strange Ark, 1930
The Isolation of the Narzisms
Christian Bérard: A Theatrical Man
Christian Bérard (1902–1949) is one of my favourite fashion illustrators, for his wonderful airy touch – his paintbrush hardly seems to skim the surface – the carefree, gestural lines, and the light and minimal colour palette.
Yet the Frenchman, nicknamed Bébé by his friends, was more than that: he was also a painter, a theatre set and costume designer, a book illustrator, and he even designed textiles and interiors. A social butterfly, he was the darling of Paris in the 1920s and 30s.
Bérard at work in the Vogue Paris office, 1937, ph. Roger Schall
A popular man, witty, charming and kind-hearted, Bérard lived large through heady times and left a great legacy.
Bérard was most famous for the set and costume design of Jean Cocteau’s (a life-long friend) film La Belle et la Bête, but he also designed the sets and costumes for ballet and the theatre. And like many artists before and after him, he turned to commercial illustration work when he required income, contributing to magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. He also worked as a fashion illustrator for Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli and Nina Ricci.
A truly theatrical man, Bérard never lost his sense of childlike wonder: he loved carnivals, street fairs and dressing up – creating costumes for parties at the drop of a hat. A popular man, witty, charming and kind-hearted, Bérard lived large through heady times and left a great legacy. Somewhat fittingly, he died while at work at the theatre: giving some final instructions to the director Louis Jouvet and some actors, he stood and said, “Well, that’s that,” upon which he collapsed from a cerebral embolism.
One of the actors present, Jean-Louis Barrault wrote after his death: If I had to choose only one among the many impressions of Christian Bérard that spring to mind, it would be one that soon became for him a profession of faith: the joy of living, to the extent of perishing from that joy … It is as if, while I think intensely of him, all of the Bérards leaping about me reply:
‘Love of life is based on suffering, anguish, nostalgia, sorrow and sadness … that’s true, but all that is the source of joy.’ [Venetian Red]
For a more thorough biography, visit Venetian Red and read Christine Cariati’s excellent story on the artist.
Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1932
Travelling Trophies
In keeping with my All Abroad! story in the Journal, here is a lovely collection of luggage labels from David Craig’s book Luggage Labels – Mementoes from the Golden Age of Travel (Chronicle Books, 1988).
They are such quaint pieces of graphic design that have vanished from daily appearance in our lives, and with them disappeared the romance of foreign travel. Although I wonder – were travellers actually annoyed to have these bits of paper plastering their matching sets of luggage? Or were they trophies of all the wonderful places they’ve been?
Although I wonder – were travellers actually annoyed to have these bits of paper plastering their matching sets of luggage?
Many years ago I was lucky enough to find a couple of vintage travelling hatboxes that featured two or three labels on the side. I even used them as overnight cases occasionally. I was utterly distraught when I discovered they had become damp and mouldy from storage in the garage one winter – I had to throw them out. In fact, some of my books had also been stored in the garage with them, including this Luggage Labels book, and it is now somewhat warped from the damp – perhaps that is rather apt. (Fortunately it escaped the mould.)
The red suitcase I have now is also vintage, purchased a couple of years ago from an enormous vintage bazaar on the Mornington Peninsula. I store all my props in it.
The wonderfully evocative Canadian Pacific poster is from another book on graphic design of the Art Deco period: British Modern – Graphic Design Between the Wars, by Steven Heller and Louise Fili.
Click through to the Vintage Luggage Labels gallery to view twenty more labels.
