What’s this font?

I like this font, and have done so for a couple of years since I first saw it in someone’s logo. But I can’t track it down! Here it is in the window of Country Road, proclaiming the ankle boot. It looks like Didot or Bodoni, but the K has a bauble instead of a serif (and probably the C, S, etc). Does anyone know what it is?

Time Marches On

Happy March, and Happy Autumn to boot! Autumn is my favourite season. So many people are complaining that summer is over already, and it was not much of a summer as it was. “How can it be?” they say on Facebook. I have to resist the temptation to facetiously utter punning clichés, ‘time marches on’ etc.

I have turned over another page of the calendar already, and here is a ‘Forecast of Autumn Fashions’, from the September 1923 edition of British Vogue. The illustration is by Georges Lepape. The woman is decked from head to foot in pumpkin orange.

Is any other colour more autumnal? Burnt orange is one of my favourite colours to wear, although it was not always so. I remember a hideous Fanta orange dress I owned when I was in my late teens. It was the end of the 80s, and I bought it cheaply from a market stall. It had white lace inserts in the pockets. Ironically, the shape of the dress was 20s inspired, with a drop waist—but nothing could save it, least of all the wrong shade of orange. 

We Blew Bubbles on a Golden Morning

Chunky // Ina‘s 1969 // No FlashOne of my friends is getting married, and she and all her girlfriends celebrated the fact last Saturday. In the morning we went to Olinda, in the Dandenong Ranges, and after lunch we played croquet! One of the girls had the lovely idea of giving us little party favours of bubble blowers (mine had the lid of a lion). When we weren’t taking a turn on the croquet lawn, we were merrily blowing bubbles, competing to make the biggest one.

I love the look of the newest Hipstamatic lens, Chunky. It has created such a lovely golden light; they’re like old photos from the 70s, already full of faded nostalgia.

Chunky // Ina‘s 1935 // No Flash

The Snow Girl

Today I had to supply a sample portfolio to a prospective client. They are looking for illustrations with an exotic, fairy-tale like ambience. I sent them four illustrations, but after I did that I pulled out an old illustration of a girl bundled up in her heavily embroidered coat, dress and muff.

I decided she needed to be put into context: a fanciful winter landscape of blue and white with snow crystals drifting down. I’m still not sure what she’s looking at so intently though…

The Ceramic Architect

Last week I visited Craft Victoria to view ceramicist Susan Robey’s exhibition Inhabit. Sculpture is one of my favourite artistic disciplines, and ceramics has always been appealing to me as well; both are attractive on a tactile level. At exhibitions I always long to caress their silky surfaces.

She creates, like Dr Frankenstein, tiny creatures that roar with life; that eyeless, blunder about.

In these works Susan Robey, a Melbourne based ceramic artist and architect, combines the structural elements of architecture – walls, columns, windows – with pliable, paper thin slabs of clay. She applies texture: ribs and punctures; repeated patterns like knit and corrugation. She creates, like Dr Frankenstein, tiny creatures that roar with life; that eyeless, blunder about. She says of her work:

”Of the many definitions of ‘animate’, I am particularly interested in ‘to fill with life’ and ‘to make as to create the illusion of motion’. Words such as scuttle, sneak, and perch come to mind, borrowed from the animal and insect world. In addition to support, I believe it is the legs which have enabled the objects to develop individual personalities. In the making order, they are attached last and therefore suddenly the objects appear to be lifted to life.”

Some of those wonky creatures indeed look like cheese graters come to life. I want to pick them up and caress them, take one home with me. These are not critters to fondle however, their folds and sharp edges class them as dangerous creatures of some future, primeval world – waiting to bite your ankle when you get out of bed in the morning.

~

Inhabit is showing until 5 March in Gallery 1, at Craft Victoria
31 Flinders Lane, Melbourne 
View the gallery online

Photo by Terence Bogue; via Craft Victoria