Artist and writer, or writer and artist. Sometimes other things, too.
Author: Alistair
Miscellaneous odd, interesting posters and signs from the aforementioned book The Public Notice. In a sign from 1854 at Dalkey, near Dublin, Laurence Waldron has a peculiarly specific complaint against his tenants:
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Some scans from The Public Notice (1973, out of print) by Maurice Rickard. It’s a gold mine. First of all, the following poster from late 1861. Despite the ambiguous grammar, they were requesting keepers for a ward of imbeciles, not ward keepers who were imbeciles. Although such terms are now used interchangeably as insults for somebody who’s acting in a way deemed stupid, until well into the 20th century “imbecile” was a respectable diagnosis meaning that a person was more functional than an idiot, but less functional than a moron. In this notice the “imbeciles” are alternatively referred to as “HARMLESS LUNATICS”, which is hardly better. Note also that these poor people (in every sense of the term) were incarcerated in a workhouse, specifically the workhouse of Bancroft Road, Stepney, in north-east London.
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(Title refers to this post, BTW.)
Some inadvertent cross-cultural comedy thanks to Japan’s Tempura Kidz– seen previously in The Rite of Spring (Onions)– who are the terrifyingly talented group who started out as the child backing dancers for autotuned über-kawaii lunatic Kyary Pamyu Pamyu.
Yes, I am obsessed with J-pop. Thanks for asking. I’m so square that genuinely enjoying Japanese pop is what passes for a secret vice in my case.
Seriously, all joking and Japan-you-so-weird aside, the choreography by the surnameless Maiko for the group is great and the way the kids themselves snap through the moves is truly brilliant. You need to be really talented and work bloody hard to dance this well and still have it look like fun. Incidentally the dancer seen front and centre through most of the video below is P→★ (try pronouncing that, English speakers); he’s a boy, he…
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“Very often those sold as tame, especially by men in the street, are simply stupefied by opium or some other drug.” Cassell’s Book of Sports and Pastimes (1896) on the buying of pet squirrels.
In a section regarding “Home Pets”, the writer (“LEWIS WRIGHT, AUTHOR OF THE ILLUSTRATED BOOK OF POULTRY”) sings the praises of squirrels as pets, and in passing makes the mind-blowing comment about casual trafficking in drugged squirrels; a comment that opens up a whole new vista of Victorian weirdness. There were men standing around on street corners, selling doped-up squirrels to passing boys? The mind boggles. In the next Victorian drama I see, in the street scenes I’d like there to be authentic shady sellers of totally monged squirrels. The squirrel pictured is of course a native British red squirrel; a century or so on from the publication of Cassell’s Book of Sports and Pastimes red…
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Odd (as in miscellaneous, and as in strange) images from the previously mentioned Cassell’s Book of Sports and Pastimes (1896).
This last image is a postcard that was not from the book, but was tucked inside it as a bookmark when I bought it. The postcard could be nearly as old as the book– I can imagine a boy at the turn of the 20th century on a dismal Snowdonian holiday, stuck indoors with Cassell’s while the rain batters down outside– but what’s really interesting to me is the fact that for a while I lived about three miles from this place and knew it immediately the moment it leapt out of the book. It’s in Conwy, sandwiched between the north coast of Wales and Snowdonia National Park. There must have been a vanishingly small chance of me finding an antique postcard of a place I’m very familiar with but that…
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The next few posts will be a miscellany of items from one of my most cherished and precious books, Cassell’s Book of Sports and Pastimes from 1896. It’s dedicated to “moderate indulgence” in “athletic and other manly exercises”. These include not just manly (again) games and exercises but also “minor out-door games”, lawn games, games of skill, recreative science, the workshop, and home pets. Yes, you heard me: keeping canaries and building miniature steam engines are both officially manly exercises.
Incidentally, will anyone cherish a DRMed file of a 2013 ebook in a hundred years time? I seriously doubt they’ll be able to even if they might want to.
It’s time to get manly, fill the various offices and ask the male friend you’re straddling “Buck, Buck, how many fingers do I hold up?” No, stop, I said offices.
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From Barnaby: Time for bed stories, a 1974 children’s book that belonged to me when I was an actual, genuine child. As opposed to the many stupid books I’ve bought since, as an adult. It’s still in my library, currently shelved between a book containing numerous photographs of Viking artefacts and a scientific textbook on human colour perception and cognition. QED.
Talking of colours, what a perfectly 70s palette the book’s cover has. And how hilariously gauche is the slogan “A Dean’s happy times book”. “Dean’s happy times” sounds like some kind of Withnail & I euphemism, but Dean is the publishing company, not some fellow who just happened to be having a suspiciously happy time making books for children in the 1970s.
Star Wars fans should also have a good look at Barnaby. You think Carrie Fisher pioneered the infamous Princess Leia do? Wrong. Barnaby was rocking the…
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Fixed stare, open mouth, head bobbing. From a 1974 children’s book by Michael Boorer, The Life of Monkeys and Apes. I’m a big fan of the the fellow on the right, the siamang. I wish I had special vocal sacs.
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Illustrations from the Jno. J Mitchell Publishing Company’s The Sartorial Art Journal, intended to assist tailors in their consultations with clients about bespoke menswear. I’m assuming they weren’t intended to be but these look rather homoerotic to me, in their own splendidly buttoned-up fin de siécle kind of way. Check out this little cruise:
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Hello. I was just wondering if you have an early 21st century Japanese magazine named after you? No? How unfortunate. How frightfully dreary your life must be.
I’m pretty sure it’s defunct now. It was a sort of middle aged executive menswear magazine; dressing like Pierce Brosnan is among the suggestions in this copy. There’s also a worringly fulsome appreciation of The Duke of Windsor, fraternising with Nazis and all.
PS: I was once stopped on the street in Harajuku by some kind of Tokyo fashionista and told that I had “mature Europe style”. Er… thanks?
A sequel of sorts to Turning the tables from a while back; the Meiji-era Japanese version of contacting the spirit world through the medium of moving furniture and incomprehensible messages. Kokkuri consisted of three bamboo rods connected to make a tripod, with a round tray or lid balanced on top. As with the Western Ouija Board, three or four people would lightly touch the lid. One person chanted “Kokkuri-sama, Kokkuri-sama, please descend, please descend. Come now, please descend quickly.” Note that -sama is the level of honorific politeness above -san, a bit like saying “Mr. Kokkuri, sir” although there isn’t really a direct English equivalent. After about ten minutes of this, the person says “If you have descended, please tilt towards [somebody present].” If all was well, the lid would move and could be used as a way for whoever or whatever had “descended” to answer questions.
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Stories of 口裂け女, the slit-mouthed woman, emerged from urban Japan in the late 1970s. At first they were particularly passed around between school children, then in the mass media. By the first half of 1979 Asahi Shinbun was highlighting kuchisake onna as a buzzword (hayari kotoba) of the year. In true, random Japanese style one of the others was “rabbit hutches”.
Occasionally Kuchisake onna was reported as a genuine physical threat, a criminal would-be kidnapper or murderer rather than a supernatural being. At times she was somehow both a real world abductor and a folkloric monster simultaneously. (See Hyaku-monogatari for the Edo origins of modern yōkai storytelling) Satoshi Kon’s extremely uneven but in places brilliant series 妄想代理人Mōsō Dairinin [Paranoia Agent] is obviously heavily inspired by the mass hysteria over Kuchisake onna. A woman with long hair and a white…
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Alistair Gentry 