Scissor Craft

In a random google today, I came across this wonderful website by artist Wilhelm Staehle. I have always enjoyed silhouette illustrations, ever since I first discovered Arthur Rackham’s pictures when I was a child. I do like Staehle’s biography on his website – it reminds me of that other great children’s author, Lemony Snicket.

Silhouette Masterpiece Theater is a gallery for the works of Wilhelm Staehle, a horribly disfigured gentleman who often frightens small children when passing. In his free time between sporting for fox hunters & dressing his disturbingly broad collection of taxidermy, he finds time to make silhouettes. He begs you to enjoy them. Or at least not to inform him if you do not. He thanks you for your time.

Look through his gallery.

Hearts & Kisses & Boobies

Here are some vintage hearts and kisses direct from 1973, specifically, Australian Vogue’s August issue. (Can you believe it cost only 75¢?!)

First up is the cover, shot by long-time Aussie Vogue photographer Patrick Russell. The credits read: Springtime, dreamtime. A whole new world of feninbine fashion to choose from. Fresh new pastel colouring to influence a new and beautiful you … The makeup is by Coty, the chiffon scarf imported by department store David Jones, the pintucked smock top is by Marimekko, and the pièce de la résistance, the ‘romantic heart-shaped sunglasses’ were created for Vogue by Sunrelax. The translucent plastic is very pretty.

Now this French Fontarel cosmetics ad titled ‘Jacqueline Matthieu's mouth’ did catch my eye (for obvious reasons), the first time I flicked through the magazine in a secondhand bookstore in country Victoria. But recently my French-speaking Swiss friend flicked through it and read aloud:

‘Jacqueline Matthieu’s mouth is not the mouth of a professional model. It’s the mouth of a French woman …’

What a scream! I was so amused I asked her to translate the rest just for your edification:

‘How is it that French women always look so beautiful, so elegant? It's because French women understand the art of makeup. In France, the name Fontarel is well known. Fontarel cosmetics are ever so pure, so fresh, so natural, so beautiful. Like French women. However, they are not just any cosmetics. No. Even in France they are exclusive. And now, Fontarel cosmetics can be found in Australia. We have the lipsticks and our selection include eye shadows, mascara, foundation and powder. Fontarel cosmetics. Now on sale in selected chemists and shops.’

The last picture, covered in kisses (not my own), is the back cover of the magazine, and features an illustration by one of my favourite vintage fashion illustrators, René Gruau, for Christian Dior’s aftershave Eau Sauvage. (Read about Gruau here. I’ve also posted pictures from a monograph I have on him – click here to view.)

Click here to see ‘The New-Skirted You’ one of the fashion shoots featured in this issue of Vogue.

Recycled Charm

Genuine Whatman Filter Paper :: Abbie // C-Type Plate // No flashOver the years I have collected lots of little vintage packaging items. I don’t merely put them on display (dustcatchers, I call those collections) – I actually use them, and find them much more charming for it.

This little cardboard box originally held 100 circles of chemically prepared filter paper; some kind of photographic consumable presumably, but I’m not sure exactly what it was used for. I used a darkroom in high school and art college, but can’t recall using this kind of filter then either.

Today it resides in the top left drawer of my vintage wooden desk, and holds paper clips – as well as a whole lot of charm. Much nicer than some kind of plastic modern equivalent.

Not Quite My Cup of Tea

Hmm, now here for my Frankie calendar’s October page is an unusual choice of illustration. It is the only month featuring a still life, by Lucy King. All the other illustrations make people, or in one case, a bear, the subject. I’m not quite sure why Frankie chose a coffee pot and creamer for October?

Do people drink more homemade beverages in the Antipodean spring? Or perhaps Australians give more afternoon tea parties when the weather becomes more clement? In which case we are in error, for Melbourne is being its usual trickster self, surprising its residents with one or two joyful sunny days, and then – having successfully lulled us once more (this happens every springtime) – subsequently shocking us for days later with a deluge to rival Noah’s flood.

Do people drink more homemade beverages in the Antipodean spring?

Illustrator and surface pattern designer Lucy King is English, but now makes her home in the Victorian country town of Kyneton. She has in the past worked for Wedgwood, which is apparent in her aesthetic. I do love surface pattern design (and have dabbled a little in it myself), but I must admit these very English watercolour florals on King’s website just aren’t my cup of tea. They are just a little bit too pretty and insipid for my taste … Like being given a cup of weak tea with lots of milk and sugar when one really wants a mug of Turkish coffee thick enough for the spoon to stand straight up in (although I have mine without sugar, so no spoons are involved).

See more of Lucy King’s work on her website and be your own judge.

Colour Theory

White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), 1950Today is the birthday of one of my favourite painters: Mark Rothko. He was born in Latvia in 1903, and died in 1970 in New York City. An abstract expressionist, he is most famous for his enormous colourfield paintings. Rothko says of his work:

‘I realize that historically the function of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint them, however … is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn’t something you command!’

No.8, 1952It is so true: one can lose oneself standing before a huge painting. I have seen very few in real life, but I find them mesmerising, hypnotic. They both confront and encourage one to look inward. He says:

‘If you are only moved by color relationships [in my paintings], you are missing the point. I am interested in expressing the big emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom.

‘The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.. the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them. And if you say you are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point.’

See all his paintings here.