Etsy and Vintage Halloween

I have recently developed an addiction to Etsy, I've been buying some interesting new additions to my collection and generally browsing for hours.

during one late night Etsy binge I stumbled into the world of vintage Halloween items, and I just love them! I have been drooling over vintage boxed costumes from Collegeville and Ben Cooper.
I bought this lovely 1950s Devil costume, it has abit of a Casper the Friendly Ghost style to it.

It's inspired me to start drawing again, I have an idea for a series of images that i'll produce as small prints based on this vintage Halloween vibe I'm loving at the moment.
Today I found an old piece of backing card from a picture frame and I loved the old. browned paper, so I did a quick sketch on this.

New French Post Mortem

My second birthday present from my parents was a lovely little French Post Mortem Cabinet Card (I chose it) its a small sized card, and I love it, its so delicate and beautiful.

Here I am holding it so you can get an idea of its size, I went through a phase of the bigger the better with the photos I was buying, but I'm getting much more interested in the little ones recently. There's something so fragile and delicate about the small ones that is so beautiful. I have another one this size and they look so lovely together, a good quality image in this size of cabinet card is just unbeatable! 

Here is a scan of the full thing, as I've mentioned it's from France, the child is posed outside judging from the wall behind. He or she has the typical 'death curl' in the hair and the face is just heartbreaking and slightly spooky. This poor child looks so fragile in death, hopefully this photograph brought some comfort to the parents and helped preserve the child's memory.

Birthday Tintypes

I got some lovely little tintypes for my birthday, they came from America, I do adore American Tintypes.
They are all children, two of them feature 'hidden mothers' where a parent had to hide just on the edge of the shot to hold a baby still for the picture, mine just feature an arm and side of head, the best hidden mother pictures have the whole figure draped in black fabric, it looks incredibly spooky.

Here they are in my hand to give an idea of size, they're very small and delicate.

The first one features a baby being held up by its mothers arm, the rest of her being out of shot. I love the way the baby is slumped in the chair in this one, makes it look quite weird. A lot of uneducated people online would say this was a postmortem picture (like they do about any slightly spooky looking photo from this era) but this was in fact a common way of trying to keep a baby still for long exposure times, as were stands with a neck holder for adults, this isn't holding up a corpse but just a way occasionally used to help keep subjects still for long periods.

This next one is beautiful, the detail is so lovely, it features the child's father holding her up with a fabric draped arm, you can see the side of his head in the image, this was originally hidden behind a paper mount.

This third one I thought was just lovely, the child looks so sweet just sat there with a funny face, he or she had done a good job of sitting for the picture as it doesn't look anyone is holding them up.

1920s Fancy Dress

We received a bundle of old photographs recently from a family member on my mums side. My mum is looking into her family history and has been asking around to find more pictures and information. Among the new pictures was an incredible, tiny picture of my Great Aunts school class on a fancy dress day in, I am guessing late 1920s.

I took two pictures of it to show the most interesting costumes, the main standout one is the amazing homemade, slightly weird looking Gollywog. My mum rang my Great Aunt who is now 90 years old to ask her about it and it turns out my Great Aunt is, in fact the child inside the Gollywog costume, she says she hated wearing it, and was really annoyed that she had to! I've seen and collected so many 1920s era fancy dress photographs, mainly from my own family, but until this one none of the subjects still survive, so it was great to hear her first hand account of it. Her parents certainly made some effort making it.

To the left side of the Gollywog is an incredibly weird looking costume, which is very spooky on first glance, as it looks like a faceless child, like some weird slenderman type figure.

A more detailed look and we think it is meant to be a duck outfit, with the winged sleeve and flipper like feet,  but how the child could see is abit of a mystery!

Acock Green Infants

I found this awesome picture in my grandads old album, its the Acock Green Infants in 1925, clearly putting on a production of 'Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross'
Seated on the far left is my Grandmother

I just love the outfits and the girl on the rocking horse is amazing, I had to save some detail crops

 

Childrens Stories Illustrated

Over the past few weeks i've been working on a series of illustrations based on some of my favourite traditional childrens stories.

Little Red Riding Hood
"Oh Grandma, what big Teeth you have"



The Three little Pigs
"The Wolf blew the house down and ate the first little pig"



Goldilocks and the three Bears
"I know who's been sleeping in my bed" Said little bear, "and she's still here"



Hansel and Gretel
"Gretel pushed her in and ran away, the godless witch was burned to death"



Little Red Shoes
"The executioner struck off her feet with the little red shoes, but the shoes danced away with the little feet across the feilds"



Gerda and the Reindeer
"Gerda ran over to the Reindeer, threw her arms around its neck, and laying her cheek against its soft muzzle, said 'please help me to find my friend'

Christmas Time

Its Christmas day! I've had a pleasant, chilled out day. My parents are watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special, which I don't like, so I decided to share my Christmas pressies on here.
I got two amazing postmortem pictures from my dad, so Chuffed with them.





The Man who sold these photographs said they were both of the same child. This could well be true, the children appear to be the same age and the wreath of flowers round the head on the one picture does look alot like the wreath resting on the childs lap in the other picture.
The only thing is I wonder why the two set ups are so different in background, the one in white with wallpaper behind, the other completely surrounded by Dark fabric. the mounts are also different, why would only one mount have the photographers stamp on it? I guess we'll never know for sure.