Brixham

 

Something different for this months' post - a day trip to Brixham.
 
Brixham is a fishing town on south Devon. It was founded somewhere between the 7th and 9th centuries AD and in the Middle Ages was the largest fishing port in the south west of England. William, Prince of Orange landed here in 1688 during the Glorious Revolution. He went on to become King William III of England with his wife Queen Mary II.


I started my walk from the car park overlooking Oxen Cove harbour.

 

 

 

 

 

Then I headed into town to get some lunch. Most of the restaurants are located around the inner harbour and there's plenty to choose from.

The inner harbour is the location for the replica of the Golden Hind used as a museum.

 

 

It's also a convenient location for mooring and repairing the larger boats.

Between the inner harbour and Oxen Cove are the quays for the larger fishing vessels and tugs.

To the north east is the marina.

Separating the harbour from Lyme Bay is the breakwater.

Near the end of the breakwater is a derelict jetty which was originally built by US forces as a landing stage for ships involved in the invasion of France in 1944.

During my visit a number of fishing boats were returning to the harbour.

By the time I'd reached the end of the breakwater Atlantic Storm Frank was beginning to make its presence known and the wind was really starting to pick up so I headed back. As I reached the car park the jetty light had just switched on.

If you're planning a visit to Brixham there's more information here:

http://www.brixham.com/

 

http://www.visitbrixham.com/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brixham

 

http://www.englishriviera.co.uk/brixham

Catch You Later!

Tags:
#brixham
#devon
#english riviera
#fishing
#trawler
#oxen cove
#1944
#invasion

1984 Part 1

Back in September I posted some pics from a 1972 mail order catalogue - now I'm back with 1984!

People have different memories of the 80's - not surprising as there was a lot going on;  New Romantics, big hair and big shoulders, raves - it depends on when you were having most fun I guess. Most likely you weren't even born then!

So here's a snap-shot of just one of those years, 1984 thanks to the pages of the Brian Mills mail order catalogue for Spring/Summer 1984.

Pastel, pastel pastel...

 

Recognize the young guy in the blue? Well if you were there in the 80's you might remember the 1985 TV ad he starred in for Levi 501 jeans where he undresses in a laundromat

XBox versus Playstation 1984 style - Atari versus Phillips

 

Not forgetting some classy linen for your boudoir...

 

And finally that 501's ad...

 

 Catch You Later!

Tags:
#1984
#1980s
#1980's
#80s
#Levi
#Levi 501
#Atari
#Phillips
#G7000
#H2O
#Nick Kamen
#Kamen
#Pierrot
#Shogun
#Brian Mills
#mail order
#catalog
#catalogue
#pastel

If I had a photograph of you

Photography using the exposure of light-sensitive materials began around the start of the 19th century.

Exposure times were by necessity long as the materials used were not as sensitive to light as more modern films. This meant that if a photographer was photographing something other than an inanimate object then the subject had to remain still for the whole period of the exposure which may last hours in the early days.

Try sitting perfectly still for 30 seconds. Yep, nose is already itching. So you can imagine how demanding it would have been to sit for hours. To overcome this problem 'posing stands' were used to support the poor subject and enable them to remain relatively still.

As time went on the technology improved and the exposure time was reduced to minutes (and eventually seconds).

Adults may be happy to sit still to have their photos taken but small children were another matter. They like to fidget and move around so you've got no chance of the little darlings sitting still to have their portraits taken. However, the Victorians came up with a simple fix - hide their mother under a sheet behind them to hold them still. The sheet could be made to look like the back of a chair and no-one would notice. Today these are generally known as Hidden Mother photographs.

 

 

And not just for babies:

Once you have some new technology some bright spark will find an alternative use for it. The Victorians loved their seances but with so many fake ghosts making an appearance at them some hard evidence for the supernatural was required. By taking multiple exposures on one photographic plate a 'ghost' could be seen to be present. Photoshop for the 1800's.

The ghosts may not have been real dead people but the Victorians had no qualms about photographing real corpses. Poor families could not afford a portrait painter to immortalise their families but some could afford a photographer. If, however, there hadn't been time to have their photograph taken whilst they were still alive their families would have them photographed post-mortem. Memento-mori were quite literally images of dead relatives.

Memento-mori have made a come-back recently but in a much more real form. Some people are now choosing to see their loved one not in a coffin at their funeral but preserved and presented as close to what they were in life.

 

 

Racking your brain as to where the title of this post comes from...?

Catch You Later!

Credits:
http://hiddenmotherphotos.tumblr.com/
http://blog.myheritage.com/2013/07/photos-from-the-past-hidden-mothers/
http://www.paranormal360.co.uk/the-best-of-victorian-ghost-photography/
http://mistgates.tumblr.com/post/65616671341/victorian-ghost-photography
http://theghostdiaries.com/memento-mori-victorian-death-photos/
http://klaq.com/halloween-game-which-body-is-the-corpse-in-these-creepy-victorian-photographs/
http://abcnews.go.com/US/dead-people-life-poses-funerals/story?id=23456853
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2549870/Deceased-boxer-23-posed-standing-ring-wake.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography
https://scheong.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/say-cheese-a-history-of-early-photography/

A big thank-you to my friend Siobhan for bringing Hidden Mother photographs to my attention and so prompting me to create this post.


tags:
#photography
#Victorian
#hidden mother
#spiritualism
#seance
#memento mori
#flock of seagulls

1972 Part 1

A few years ago when I was clearing my grandparents house after they had passed away I found a copy of the Great Universal Stores mail order catalogue for Spring/Summer 1972. It was in the cupboard under the stairs and was a bit musty and dog-eared but there were no missing pages. It's a real insight into the fashion of the time and also how some fashions have hardly changed at all.

Here's the first instalment of a time-warp back to 1972!

First up are their overseas buying trips to Paris, glamorous offices in Bolton and Widnes, and the state-of-the-art despatch area (eat your heart out Amazon). But best of all is the tech guy and his IBM mainframe:

Ladies fashions

Cool teens

Cool dudes (not)

Father Ted can't even get 1 bar on his mobile

When I'm cultivating the garden I always wear 4" white heels

The catalogue has over 1000 pages so I'll post some more pics later. In the same cupboard I also found the Brian Mills Spring/Summer 1984 catalogue so I'll post pics from them later as well.

Catch You Later!

tags:

#1972

#universal

#catalog

#catalogue

#mail order

#retro

#clothes

#father ted

#funky

Kobayashi Kaichi

Kobayashi Kaichi (real name Kobayashi Yoshikazu) was a Japanese artist specialising in designs for wood block printed postcards and envelopes.

Little is known of his life and career but I've tracked down some information (there were a few other details that I couldn't accurately translate them from the original Japanese so I've not included them here).

He was born in Kyoto in 1896 and studied at the Kyoto Municipal Painting School (now Kyoto City University). By 1922 he was working for the Kimono Time design house under the pen name of Song Jig. He also worked for the publisher Sakuraiya. In 1942 he married and his family eventually included one daughter and three sons. He died in 1968.

During the Taishō and early Shōwa periods (1912 to late 1920's) Kobayashi created designs for postcards and envelopes for woodblock printing which were heavily influenced by early Art Deco style then popular in the West and gaining popularity in Japan. It is estimated that he may have created up to 700 different designs.
 
Some of the postcards were sold as packs of four similar designs whilst many others were one-off designs.

From the series Youth

From the series Woman Waiting for Her Beloved

From the series Flowers of Darkness

 

 From the series Rain Falls

 

From the series Evening of Sorrow

 

Many postcards and envelopes amazingly survived the Second World War and collections of Kobayashi Kaichi's works are exhibited from time to time.

His style is still be seen influencing the works of modern illustrators such as Kaden on Pixiv:

 

If you're wanting to see more of Kobayashi Kaichi's works online there are plenty to see with Pinterest being a good place to start.

Catch You Later!

Credits:
http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/nostalgic_fmy/21717674.html
http://www.scholarsresource.com/browse/period/222?page=442
http://www.gotokyo.org/en/event/exhibition/h25/026.html
http://thebluelantern.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/from-nouveau-to-art-deco-in-showa-japan.html
http://www.mfa.org/collections/
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/小林かいちhttp://www.hoshina-museum.com/
https://www.pinterest.com/
http://www.pixiv.net/


tags:
#Kobayashi Kaichi
#japan
#postcard
#woodblock
#youth