into 2010

little steps

big heart

happy new year,

one and all!

Roman Vishniac

A few years ago...could it have been ten? Yes. I think so... this book came into our house. The children in it are impossible to forget. It's a lovely book. Mara Vishniac Kohn points out, in the introduction, that the fate of the pictures -- and the photographer -- was, in mid-1930's, darkly uncertain. "What would happen to a Jewish photographer of Latvian nationality living in Berlin, who had surreptitiously taken thousands of pictures of struggling groups of East European Jews?" I suppose it's a small miracle that, at least, many of the negatives were saved. "In this book," Kohn wrote, "we want to remember the children Roman loved, the children of 'a vanished world.' Their images are surrounded with the songs and rhymes that made them smile... We think of them, we assure them of our love, and we cherish their memory."

Roman Vishniac, Children of a Vanished World. University of California Press.

cracker jack

set a little holiday cheer

with dear friends

Benjamin Pollock

Pollock's.

(Again.)

"Who is Pollock?

Benjamin Pollock was probably the only a shop-keeper in Hoxton, once a down-trodden district of East London, to get a Times obituary. When he died in 1937, aged 80, he had kept alive the tradition of toy theatre publishing for sixty years, and was visited by famous people - actors, authors and celebrities, including Robert Louis Stevenson and Serge Diaghilev.

There are still people living who visited Benjamin Pollock's shop and remember his old-world courtesy and dogged persistence with his unusual trade. Pollock's Toy Museum is named after him, because after his death the stock of printing plates and printed sheets of characters and scenes was rescued and set up as a new business. In the 1950s, Marguerite Fawdry added a museum of Victorian toys to put the toy theatres in context, and Pollock's Toy Museum was born."

from Pollock's Toy Museum

The Atom Secrets, 1950, by Malvina Cheek

Canal boat cabin from

an unpublished toy theatre play.

from
Pollock's Toy Museum

"Malvina Cheek painted a set of scenes for a new toy theatre play written by George Speaight, which was intended to be published by the revived Pollock business. In the modern-life story, two children go in pursuit of robbers who have stolen their father’s briefcase, with the help of a local canal boatman and his wife. The folk art of canal boats was appreciated by many of the same people in the 1940s who revived interest in toy theatre, including George Speaight and Malvina Cheek’s friend, Barbara Jones."

Father Christmas

Father Christmas, a 1930s wood

engraving by Harold Jones

Pollock's Toy Museum

golden

pollock's:

perfect!

Mr Ardizzone presents his Christmas pantomime, 1947.

sigh

Cake & Miss Go Chi

from

Mrs. Beeton in Heaven

by M. B. Goffstein

"...Miss Go Chi
Can you
Make it
Without mace

And nutmeg?
SEED CAKE
4 eggs
4 teacupfuls

Of sugar,
2 teacupfuls
Of butter,
A teacupful

Of milk
One table-
Spoonful
Of caraway

Seeds
½ teaspoonful
Of carbonate
Of soda

Flour
Beat the
Ingredients
Well together

Adding the
Flour by
Degrees
Until a

Paste thick
Enough
To roll out
Is made

Make into
Small cakes
And bake
In a quick

Oven 10
To 15
Minutes
Are there

Any
Other
Questions?
Can you

Make it
Without milk?
Turn to
Page 1135..."

No question

about it.

Wishing

M. B. Goffstein

the most

delectable of birthdays,

and many more.

More Mrs. Beeton in Heaven, here.

in a moc mood

looking for moccasins (to wrap, under tree)

came across excellent this from allplaidout

great stuff: here

O

gump's

double yes, please

katy's vardo via tiny house

jeff shelton huts via remodelista

yes, please

back to

louise et marcel

wendy macnaughton

for unawares some entertained angels

We all sort of know this, I suppose.

(It's remembering it that is not so easy.)

הכנסת ארחים אל תשכחו כי יש אשר הכניסו בה מלאכים ולא ידעו׃

above, Tobit and Raphael via Rembrandt

blue and white, at the met

"I started to sing a camp song..."

Family Scrapbook

M. B. Goffstein

collection

garden steampunk

The Porter Garden Telescope

from Garden History Girl

How to Cook a Wolf

So anyway. Thinking about war-time cooking made me think of this. And led me, in search of MFK & Wolf, to a charming bit of writing (and another magnificent blog to explore). Won't get long-winded about this. Here's an excerpt from said blog (and a hat-tip to Katherine Sharpe, the authoress):

"That, to me, is Fisher’s lesson: that you can eat (or, by extension, do anything) with intentionality, composure, and in the way that most pleases you—and that, within limits, you can do this regardless of how well-off you happen to be. If you get the hang of it, she suggests, other people will see these simple achievements as a remarkable and powerful thing. If you manage not to be blown off course by the whims and expectations of others, you might even make people mad occasionally."

while you are making that holiday list

Those who know me know that I tend to get a little over-focused sometimes. And I know that I mentioned the great good stuff at Ancient Industries a few posts ago. But I didn't show you of any of the marvels I was raving about, and since these are the sugarplums that are dancing through my head this December I thought it would be fun to share.

There's lots more (as you'll see when you go). Elegantly selected and perfectly delectable. Useful, each and every one! Perhaps that's why it all seems so completely desirable this year. Who needs stuff they don't need? These days, there's no reason for it. (Not that there ever is.)

So. Be good to yourself. Go have a peek. It's beautiful.

Shop Ancient Industries. (But please go easy on any hedgehogs you might encounter. It was a war-time thing.)

All photos and text, above,
via (of course) Ancient Industries.

ludwig's other girl

there is something about this drawing

that take me right back to a state of

complete happiness from my childhood

how much i love the long runner, yellow blankets,

red hair, stacked beds, window, curtains,

teardrops, curly hair, straight hair and bows

cannot be put into words. it is bliss to me.

Elsie, below, must have been delighted

to be in the company of Madeline's maker

(or course, I was sad that Madeline was crying

but perhaps that was it: the whole scene is

somehow divinely human and straight to the heart)

p.s. i spent a lot (a lot a lot) of time looking

(when i was very young) at this page and could not

figure out for the life of me how they slept in their bows

and kept them so delightfully pert. it was a beautiful

mystery to me, and i wanted desperately to sleep in a

bow and have it not fall out of my short red bob and

then i would surely wake up looking simply marvelous.