Cheshire Hat

A cat hat.  A Cheshire cat hat. Not a grin without a cat, or a cat without a grin, but a case to put your head in.

A present from my generous boyfriend…

Do you know how hard it is to scan a hat?

A Mad Tea-Party by Clifford Richards

A Mad Tea-Party by Clifford Richards.

From the V&A Shop website:

A Mad Tea-Party – a celebration of British Design by Clifford Richards

Giclee print
Limited edition of 150, signed and numbered by the artist.

Created by Clifford Richards to celebrate British Design in the year 2012.  Look closely at the print to see a plethora of design classics and some familiar faces.  Now in his 70s, Clifford Richards left his advertising job in the mid 1960s to focus on creating his own products, invariably made from card and adorned with bold, colourful graphic illustration. Much of his work from the 60s and 70s is now in the V&A’s permanent collection.

The print is full of references to British design: from Gilbert and George to Dyson. It’s hard to see them all at small scale, but here’s the list if you want to have a go:

L-R: Grayson Perry and Measles, Peter Blake, David Hockney, Stephen Jones, Damien Hirst, Prof Tracey Emin wearing a dress loosely based on Vivienne Westwood’s designs, Gilbert and George, Heston Blumenthal pouring a rainbow, Terence Conran

The table leg is from the Louis Console Table by John Reeves for Heal’s. Peter Blake sits on Tom Dixon’s Offcut Stool. Stephen Jones on a Robin Day Polyprop Armchair, Terence Conran lounges in his own Cone Chair and in the foreground is Ron Arad’s Three Skin Chair.

Under the table Paul Smith is represented by his brands shopping bag and James Dyson by his Ball. There is a trash can that used to appear on old Mac computers.

On the table are a couple of Clifford Richards Urban Alphabet mugs. One showing an anglepoise lamp which was an original British design, a vase with Mary Quant’s flower and an iconic plastic squeeze Red Tomato.

At the back is bunting representing the Queen’s Jubilee, an E-Type Jaguar and Concorde.

Available from the V&A or on Amazon.

Spineless Classics Alice

Spineless Classics poster of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

According to their website, Spineless Classics are ‘complete, legible texts of classic books in one poster’. It really is clearly legible, although probably not the easiest reading experience. Certainly not recommended for the bath…

It contains the full text, with Alice peeping behind the curtain in the hall of doors, and with a tumble of hearts and clubs and spades and diamonds behind her.

I like the fact that the ‘Mouse’s Tale’ keeps its original type-setting.

This was my Christmas present, but you can get it on Amazon.

Alice in Escherland

Alice in Escherland incorporating Funmaths: Celebrating the Worlds of Lewis Carroll and M.C. Escher. Jointly written calendar for 1998- by John Bibby, John Sharp and Edward Wakeling.

QED Publications, 1998

ISBN: 1858530261

Edward Wakeling is a former chairman of the Lewis Carroll Society. His interest in Lewis Carroll apparently began in 1975 when he attended an exhibition at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire organized by the Lewis Carroll Society. This started an interest in collecting Lewis Carroll’s works, and he now owns one of the finest collections of Carroll material in private hands. (I’m planning on rivalling him eventually )

1998 marked both the centenary of Dodgson’s death and of Escher’s birth this calendar explores the life and works of them both, with important dates highlighted, and lots of puzzles and games.

There’s a page exploring Dodgson’s interest in the number 42 (said to be the reason that Douglas Adams chose it as the ‘answer’ in the Hitchhiker series).

There are also pages on Alice in Flatland, Escher and Möbius Bands, Morphing and Golden Rectangles.

Out of print, but occasionally available on Amazon: Alice in Escherland

Anne Coulter Martens

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland adapted by Anne Coulter Martens.

Published 1965 by The Dramatic Publishing Company.

Softback.

Play for schools based on Alice.

Publisher’s blurb:

Cast: 35 m. and w., doubling possible. As the curtain rises, Alice slides into view at the end of her long fall down the rabbit-hole. It is a more delightful place for the audience than for Alice, who is trying desperately to get back home. She tries to get help from the Mad Hatter, the Rabbit, and from the very nice Cheshire Cat. Long enough to contain the most delightful incidents, it is short enough to keep audience attention.

On Amazon: Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland; a play in two acts

You can see one school’s version on Youtube.

Larry in Wonderland

Larry in Wonderland: A Pearls Before Swine Collection by Stephan Pastis.

Published by Andrews McMeel Publishing (4 Oct 2011).

ISBN-10: 1449408176

Paperback.

Stephan Pastis has his own wordpress blog over at http://stephanpastis.wordpress.com/ , and there’s an interview with him here.

He’s a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and of the UCLA School of Law, and worked as a lawyer before switching to his new career path. I must admit I’d never heard of him or of his series before discovering this, but I look forward to reading it.

From the publisher’s blurb:

Stephan Pastis offers Pearls Before Swine fans a visit to the other side of the looking glass with his latest collection, Larry in Wonderland. Collecting almost a year’s worth of strips, Larry in Wonderland offers cutting-edge commentary on recent news events, popular culture, and cartoon-page contemporaries, and imparts the knowledge that in Wonderland, crocodiles taste a lot like chicken.

Through Pastis’s mindful menagerie of characters, including the Mad Ducker, Cheshire Snuffles, Tweedledum Pig, and Tweedledee Idiot Pig, along with Raterpillar, Zebra, and Larry the Croc, Pearls Before Swineexpertly illustrates the flaws and shortcomings of human nature, while remaining “indifferent” to conventional cartoon molds such as plotline “continuity.” In the words of Raterpillar, “Plotline schmotline.”

With multiple honors as Best Comic Strip of the Year by the National Cartoonists Society, and an international fan base that follows the strip’s appearance in more than 600 newspapers worldwide, Pearls Before Swinetransports readers to a world of shifting perspectives and alternate realities, like the one presented insideLarry in Wonderland.

You can get it on Amazon: Larry in Wonderland: A Pearls Before Swine Collection

Book Collector: Alice and her Imitators

Book and Magazine Collector: Alice and her Imitators.

Issue No. 300.

Editor: Christopher Peachment.

Published 2008 by Diamond Publishing Ltd.

With a whole article on stuff wot I’m interested in, how could I pass this by when I saw it in the Crouch Hill Oxfam Bookshop. I was hoping it’d lead me to some new things I hadn’t yet heard of, but instead it terrified me by suggesting just how much some of my collection could be worth.

I really must get insurance sorted out.

(Mind you, I suspect my copies are rather more down-at-heel and dog-earred-of-corner than the ones priced up in here. I can’t afford pristine: I buy tatty )

Alice Through the Fibreglass

Alice Through the Fibreglass or an AA Checkmate: Playbill.

1948 Pantomime.

Folding single sheet, with a very pretty cover.

‘Produced and Directed by the AA Panto Committee 1948. Curtains and Costumes by courtesy of Fibreglass Ltd.’

giles jigsaw puzzle

Birthday present from my boyfriend’s parents! How cool!

Alice in Wonderland Through the Visual Arts

Alice in Wonderland Through the Visual Arts, edited by Gavin Delahunty and Christoph Schulz.

Published to accompany the Tate Liverpool exhibition, 4 November 2011. Soft back.

ISBN 978 1 85437 991 7

From the back cover:

Lewis Carroll’s stories based around the character of Alice have proved to be among the most enduring literary creations of all time. For almost 150 years they have led a double life, on one hand classics of children’s literature and on the other endlessly fascinating source material for artists, writers, filmmakers and creatives of all kinds.

For the first time, this extensively illustrated book examines the visual art that has been inspired by the Alice stories. Beginning with Lewis Carroll’s original sketches and Tenniel’s iconic illustrations it then explores the appearance of the books extraordinary characters in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, film animation and video. Essays by Gillian Beer, Alberto Manguel, Christoph Schulz and Edward Wakeling grant fresh insights Carroll’s life and work together with a new fairy tale specially written by Carol Mavor.

Artists featured include Fiona Banner, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Anna Gaskell, Dan Graham, Paul Nash, Yayoi Kusama, Robert Smithson, Annelies Strba, Diana Thater and Luc Tuymans.

Gavin Delahunty is Head of Exhibitions and Displays at Tate Liverpool. Christoph Schulz is an independent curator.

Bought from the Tate, but available on amazon: Tate Alice in Wonderland