Day #6&8: William Morris & the Arts and Crafts Movement

The Arts & Crafts movement was a design movement that arose in the second half of the 1800’s. In response to the aggressive expansion of industry and shoddiness of mass produced items, artists of the movement sought to return to hand produced crafts. William Morris became the leader of the group with the establishment of his business Morris & Co, which produced many handmade textiles, wallpapers, and furniture, as well as his Kelmscott Press printing company.

A very strong underlying theme in our trip was the Arts & Crafts movement, we visited lots of relevant sites and it somehow managed to sneak into unsuspecting places as well. So obviously the first stop on our Arts & Crafts tour had to be the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow. This we followed up later with another walk along the Thames past the original home of the Kelmscott Press in Hammersmith and on to the home of Emery Walker, the immaculately preserved Arts & Crafts home of a printer who worked with Morris.

  Along the River Thames in Hammersmith

Read more about the stops on our Arts & Crafts tour after the jump...

Day #5: Kew Gardens

While gardens and plants are a major source of inspiration for artists and designers I will try and keep my slideshow of pictures of plants to a minimum, though my unfortunate boyfriend will not be as lucky as the rest of you. But, I mostly want to focus on the piece of art we found there.

My mother and her grade school friend, our wonderful host, both love gardens and are avid gardeners so it only made sense we would end up in a garden eventually. But Kew, the Royal Botanical Gardens, is an absolutely breathtaking park with an extraordinary variety of plants, trees, greenhouses and gardens (there were even live peacocks just wandering around). 

When we came out of the first huge greenhouse we discovered our (non-vegetative) favorite thing in the park, which was the Rose Garden Tea Party, an installation created by Kirsti Davies & Giles Thaxton which featured a variety of edible plants growing up from china planters all across the table. Depending on where you sat the table and china would inform you what theme you were looking at, such as plants used in fizzy drinks. The beautifully crafted china then labelled the plants and hinted at how the plants were applied to food and beverages.

One of the artists was actually there as we were admiring the table, recoloring the text on the table. She fun to talk to and had a lot to offer about the production of the china. My only complaint would be that I couldn’t buy these for my own table.

Learn more about the incredible process of this creation here: http://incredibleteaparty.co.uk/

Day #4&7: The V&A

The Victoria & Albert Museum in London is one of my favorite museums I have ever been to. It’s the worlds largest design and decorative arts museum with a collection housing over 4.5 million objects. Oh and did I mention admission is free? Because it is. I love that most of the museum is not just pictures on a wall, instead there are whole galleries dedicated to iron works, mosaics, theater design, stained glass, jewelry and so much more. We had visited the V&A on our last trip to London and realized we hadn’t even scratched the surface of their collection and had to return. We spent most of our time in the Theater & Performance Gallery as well as in their Cast Courts. See more of our favorite pieces after the jump...

Birthday Birds

Not only was Sunday Father's Day, a week ago was my father's birthday so there was quite a bit of dad celebrating to do. For those of you who don't know my father, he is an excellent musician, fantastic furniture maker and quite the technical illustrator. And none of those are even his day job. But his job does intersect with one of his oldest hobbies - birdwatching. So it was a natural choice to make they contents of his birthday card avian.

Here's a lovely sketch.

And the final painting.

Flowers, Plants, and Leaves

Lately I have been trying to work on some designs for patterns, though I can't say I am progressing forward very quickly. Basically just been sketching bunches of flowers, plants and leaves. So here are just some drawings that will hopefully become something later...

 

 

Let's Shop Some Independent Artists

Recently I have adopted a new shopping vice. Before it was mostly books. I buy books like women are stereotypically supposed to buy shoes. But really, can I complain? There are worse vices, worse expenditures. I could be buying porcelain baby dolls...or drugs. My new vice is also really quite harmless but super addictive...art.

Not in the framed landscapes, silent auction sort of way. But thanks to Etsy and craft fairs I can get doses of little pieces of affordable art (or crafts). Some recent additions include:

Laura Berger's Feel Better Now Zine, $10

Image from Laura's Etsy

 And boy, did it ever work. I was having a pretty rotten week last week. The USB port on my tablet was broken (solution acquired though!) and my seltzer machine, light of my beverage life, was on the fritz. All my accessories were failing and I was cranky. Then I opened my mail box and found my package containing this adorable zine. How can you stay upset with images such as these:

 

 You can visit Laura's Etsy shop here: www.etsy.com/shop/laurageorge

Okay, so that one was kinda cheating, it's still a book but the next one isn't, promise:

Owl Rattle from Free Ramblin' Folk, $18

Massachusetts College of Art and Design hosts a spring sale every year offering a variety of work from students and alumni with a percentage of  proceeds going the artists and the rest to student scholarships. In all my years as a student, alumni and staff member I have never purchased anything from the sale, till I saw these fine fellows by Fashion alum, Katie Cavacco. I didn't actually realize it was a rattle until I picked it up to bring to the cash register, but I still don't think I would actually let a child sully his wise facade constructed of upcycled felted wool sweaters. He will be the guardian of my books. 

See more in Katie's Etsy shop, here: www.etsy.com/shop/FreeRamblinFolk

Finding Design in Brooklyn...

Like that's hard, pshaw! It seems like every other store in Brooklyn sells fantastically designed (if not slightly overpriced) knick-knacks, stationary, and kitchen products. But here's a round up of some of the cool things I purchased on trip to New York last weekend.

First, every time I am in New York, I always end up in used book stores. Do I need more books? No. Do we lack used book stores in Boston? No. Do I always end up buying more while I'm there? YES. One of our first stops on our walking trip of what felt like all of Brooklyn was P.S. Bookshop in Dumbo. I ended buying a cheap copy of The Road which should be my next read, and I also picked up a few of these:

Decomposition Notebooks - Pocket Sized by Michael Roger Press, made of 100% recycled post-consumer waste, printed with soy ink, etc. etc. And even without the green appeal, they have the best designs ever on their covers. I picked up the ones above, a honeycomb and typographic map. More of their products can be seen here: www.michaelroger.com

Second stop ended in a complete impulse buy of these great postcards I saw in the window of a baby store:

 I had seen these terrarium postcards by Quill & Fox online before and I thought they would be perfect to send to my mom, who loves postcards & terrariums (two birds-one stone). They had always lived on my online wish list till I picked them up in store. You can see more of their adorable stationary at: quillandfox.com

Then we went to Williamsburg,  where all of the quirky things live. We visited yet another used book store, Book Thug Nation, a tiny space with an excellent stack of old mysteries and noirs. I picked up an old copy of Agatha Christie's An Overdose of Murder for $4. I loved the skulls on the cover.

One of our final stops was the Brooklyn Art House, home of the Sketchbook Project, which if you have never heard of is the contribution of sketchbooks by artists all over the world, compiled into an incredible traveling show. I wanted to live in this room, surrounded by all these incredible books:

You can pick a theme and the library will randomly pull two or three sketchbooks meeting the criteria of your search which you can then sit and go through at your leisure. Learn more about the project and their Brooklyn Library here: www.sketchbookproject.com

Traveling Across These 50 United States

I was inspired over the weekend by this awesome map I found Etsy, made by Ello There Wedding Invitations & Print Shop run and created by Maddy & Seth Lucas:

I loved their map to help you track which of the national parks you've been to across the United States. I wanted to make my own map of places I had been around the country, so I tooled around in my sketchbook and came up with this:

 

Probably worth looking at big.

Visit Maddy & Seth's blog here: ellotheredesign.blogspot.com 

And their Etsy shop here: www.etsy.com/shop/ElloThere  

 

Book Restoration

A few days ago I was having a lazy weekend and I was trying to find something to make the weekend more interesting, a project to keep my hands busy. So I found an old book on the shelf that I have been meaning to rebind for ages. It's a copy of Grimms' Fairy Tales that I bought at a library forever ago that fell out of it's cover. I realized that before I bound the book and lost the end sheets I had to scan them in and maybe print them out to use again.I thought I would share them here because they are darling:

Here's the cover, I love the debossing and I want 

to use the font again on its new cover.

I feel like these end sheets are a bit too cheery for Grimms.

The inscription on the inside cover reads: Happy Birthday to David from daddy & Mother.  I'm not sure when the book was printed by the inscription is dated July 15, 1940. So it's a bit old. It's a little bizarre owning a book that was given to someone as a gift over 70 years ago, but I like knowing it has a history.

Birthday Banner Book-Card

I love love love making people cards. Birthdays, holidays, valentines, thank you cards, I love them all. You may not know this about me because I usually don't take pictures of them before I send them out, but this time I did. I was inspired to make these based on those birthday banners people hang on the wall at parties, the ones like this:

So I took that idea and I wanted to make a banner that you could hang that would say 'Happy Birthday' but at the end of the week when the festivities are over you could take it down and fold back into a book. Here was what I came up with:

And here is another one, just with different colors and a bit bigger (the first one measures 1 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches) this one is about 2 x 2.

 just went to Micheal's and bought about 10 rolls of ribbon so I expect to pretty crazy with making a bunch of these in all different colors and styles.

Mr. Mole

I posted about this piece a while back but this was before I had nice pictures of the finish. This is a tunnel book about the opening scene of Wind in the Willows when Mr. Mole becomes fed up with his underground life and decides to leave his mole hole. I finally got a chance to take nice photographs and here they are:

Another Illuminated Letter

Seeing as you all come around this blog for my illuminated letters, I have another one for you. This project moves painfully slowly and hopefully one day we will see it done, but for now here's my snails pace progress:

J is for Jentacular - of or pertaining to a breakfast taken early in the morning, or immediately on getting up.

The Wind in the Willows

A little while ago I was exploring Netflix and I found the old stop-motion animation Wind in the Willows program that we for some reason had taped on VHS that I would just watch on repeat when I was a kid. You know, this one:

And I remembered just how much I had loved the Wind in the Willows story so I sat down that afternoon and read the whole book. Suddenly, I realized, I should be doing drawings based on the story. And not just drawings...tunnel books. So I began the process of sketching out a tunnel book from the first paragraph:

"The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said 'Bother!' and 'O blow!' and also 'Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gavelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, 'Up we go! Up we go!' till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow." 

Mr. Mole preliminary sketches

Tunnel Book Sketch

A few water colors and a few cut up fingers later, construction began.

And this is pretty much it.

I want to make a series of these so I can make a little star book out of them. There will be more better pictures to follow but I can't photograph the piece....until it gets back from the show it's in! I will post more about the show soon.

Long Time, No See

It was a busy whirlwind of a summer. It felt like every weekend I was shipping off to some other event, family gathering or adventure. And I know, the blog got neglected. But I hope to be back with a vengeance. And I have quite a few things to post. But first, here is a quick glance into my summer in art & design:

1. Graphic Design—Now in Production 

Co-organized by Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and the Walker Art Center. Held on Governor's Island off New York City.

Pages of exhibition catalog from the Cooper-Hewitt.

 Unfortunately while this exhibit is now over, it was a wonderful collection of all forms of design. The small building was packed with so much information, it was extraordinary. Not too mention you then get to spend the day on Governor's Island, which is such a wonderful place for a public park (and free!). While the group I was with did not quite have the patience to explore the whole exhibit (it was an overwhelming amount of content) we found a few choice pieces. I particularly enjoyed the collection by Anthony Burrill:

The piece on the bottom right, Oil & Water Do Not Mix is screen printed with oil from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster. For more information about the exhibit, look at the Cooper Hewitt Website: Graphic Design - Now in Production

2. Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations
Curated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in Manhattan, New York 

The success of the Met's Costume Institute has been on the rise in the past few years and the exhibits are becoming more and more popular. A fashion-savvy friend of mine chose this trip for us and while I'm what you would call the opposite of fashion-savvy it was still a fun exhibit. Regardless of your knowledge of fashion, it is fun for any designer to see the comparisons between the works of these two icons. Unfortunately this exhibition is also over, but you can see more on the Met's website: Costume Institute

3. The Allure of Japan
Curated from works housed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts

The Modern Poster by William H. Bradley (1895)

Now for an exhibit a little bit closer to home. The Museum of Fine Arts, like most museums, has an extensive collection that you rarely even get to see. So they fill several of their smaller galleries with exhibits curated from their own collections. This is always fun as you get to see a broad array of work from many artists with nice simple themes. This year, the MFA's Allure of Japan explores the American fascination with Japanese art around 1900 and the impact it had on artists, particularly poster designers. While the exhibit only fills one room I found myself taking pictures of everything on my phone so I could look up the artist later. In short, I loved it.This exhibit is still running! Hooray! It will be open until the end of the year.

4. Summer Reading
Books acquired over the summer...

McSweeney's Issue 13 - This McSweeny's Issue is compiled solely of comics, even the dust jacket is a comic poster that is folded up and wrapped around the cover! This one was quite a find at the used bookstore basement at the Brooklyn Booksmith for only $15.




 

 The Illustrated Life:Drawing Inspiration from the Private Sketchbooks of Artists, Illustrators and Designers by Danny Gregory - This awesome books is a collection of pages from various artists sketchbooks including R. Crumb, James Jean and many others.

Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton - I took a typography class over the summer and this was one of our required readings. It was a wonderful compilation of interesting reading and excellent graphics (including this one).

5. Poster Project 

Working at Massachusetts College of Art and Design (even in an Admin. Assistant position) exposes to me to some really great projects people are working on. I spent the summer working on the administrative side of a traveling gallery show of posters designed to raise awareness on a variety of issues, from natural disasters to social injustice. I got to see a whole lot of incredible work and artists I had never encountered. Here's a small sampling:

(Left to right) Lives in Danger by Hiroyuki Matsuishi, Susana Machicao, Weapons of Mass Creation by Angryblue

More posts (of my art!) to follow soon...

Adventures in Typography

While being an Administrative Assistant is not my dream job, working for the school does provide some excellent perks, one of which is free classes. So this summer I signed up for a Typography course so I could learn a bit more about design and hopefully apply it to my other illustration work. While there have only been about two classes here's something made from the first assignment. We had to create a collage with blocks of text in varying weights and spacing etc. The first one I made wasn't my favorite, but the second was a little more fun, once I had a little more command and knew what to expect. Of course, with my illustration background, it was still an illustration, I couldn't just go full blown abstract. Here it is:

 

I call it: Typecat

Tiny Homemade Shelves

Recently pictures have been popping up all over the internet of those curio cases or old letterpress trays people use store cute quirky little things in, like skeleton keys and old toys and shells. These things are like 'I Spy' on your wall. And I thought, "Hey, I have cute quirky stuff that needs somewhere to go!" But I do not have an old letterpress tray or the know-how to build things out of wood, so I turned to my dear old friend, book board. Who needs wood when you can just draw wood grain?

Now originally, my overwhelming ambition said "Alice, you're going to build a box like 1ft by 2ft. It's gonna be huge, you'll fit all your things in that box." Then I started to do math...

 

Then I started to draw the wood grain...

And then my box ended up being 4 3/4 by 6 inches! Victory!

I rationalize that I can just build a series of them, all catered to the different things I put in them.

 Contained in this box are: a letterpress block 'A' I got on Portobello Road, an old pocket watch found at a flea market, a Totoro my mother felted for me for Christmas (she might be more crafty than me!), an unusual take on the runcible spoon (layman's terms - a spork) and a doughnut Christmas ornament made by my coworker, Jocelyn Gomes, who unfortunately has no website I can direct you to, which is shame because she is fabulous.

Repurposed Christmas Gifts

Around Christmastime we all realize there are lots of people we would like to get gifts for but can't really afford to do so. This year I decided to make something quick and easy to give to the people I couldn't afford gifts for. So I made ornaments and nice little boxes for them to go in.

 

The boxes were made out of (very seasonably appropriate) Trader Joe's bags wrapped around card stock to make them more durable. 

Inside were ornaments made of old Christmas cards and 

homemade paste paper.

Yay! Instagifts!