Almost Alice

 

In Tim Burton's 2010 movie 'Alice in Wonderland' Absolem the caterpillar states that Alice is 'Almost Alice' - and he was right.
 

 

As you will most likely know, the movie was based on Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and, in my humble opinion, does a fine job of bringing the novel to life (even though it changes quite a few bits).

Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) probably based his Alice on the real Alice - Alice Pleasance Liddell.

Alice Liddell was born in 1852 and in 1856 her family moved to Oxford where she first met Dodgson. In 1862, whilst on a boat trip with her two sisters, Edith and Lorina and Dodgson, Alice asked him to tell them a story; this story became 'Alice's Adventures Under Ground' and, subsequently 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'.
 

Dodgson maintained a relationship with the Liddell family until 1863. Various sources suggest that Dodgson may have been obsessed with Alice or her sister Lorina and this forced the break with the family (Wikipedia has loads more on this).

 
Alice later toured Europe with her sisters Edith and Lorina. Later, it was rumoured that she may have been romantically connected with Prince Leopold. In 1880 Alice Liddell married Reginald Hargreaves in Westminster Abbey and they went on to have three sons (two of whom died in the First World War).

 
Reginald died in 1926 and in 1934 Alice followed him. She was cremated and her ashes buried in the graveyard of the church of St Michael and All Angels Lyndhurst, Hampshire.

 

 

 

If you're a regular reader of this blog you'll have noticed a distinct lack of blogging in 2016 - hopefully in 2017 I'll return to regular monthly posting (and hopefully the migraines will stay away...)

 

 

Catch You Later!

 

 

 



 
Credits:
Alice-in-Wonderland.net
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Liddell
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alice_Liddell_grave_in_Lyndhurst1.jpg
https://nhetic.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/mon-avis-sur-alice-in-wonderland/
http://www.playbuzz.com/shaythewolf10/which-tim-burtons-alice-in-wonderland-character-are-you
www.express.co.uk 
https://uk.pinterest.com/cuzinelmer/alice-liddell-hargreaves/

Glass Beach

Glass Beach is situated near Fort Bragg in California. There are actually 3 Glass Beaches situated near each other but it's the third site which is usually referred to as Glass Beach.

In 1906 a dump was created for Fort Bragg residents to dispose of their waste. By 1943 this site had filled up and a new site was opened which by 1949 was also filled. A third site was then opened which was filled by 1967 and was subsequently closed. Over the following decades the waste was cleared and recycled but the broken glass and pottery that had been dumped there was left behind and became rounded by the action of the sea tumbling it over the pebbles.

Glass Beach has been a tourist attraction for many years and attracts tens of thousands of people each year. Visitors not surprisingly want to take away a souvenir; some take a few glass pebbles but others take bags and buckets of pebbles away with them. This has meant that depth of glass pebbles has reduced from around a foot (30cm) to just a thin layer today. Collecting is banned on the beach but this does not stop peoples collecting.

I've not personally visited the area but I was made aware of its existence whilst searching for music samples. Soundiron is a company producing deep-sampled instrument libraries. They've recorded numerous sounds from Glass Beach which are available as a set of samples for the Kontakt player.

Below is a track created by Soundiron using the Soundiron Glass Beach set:




If you want to visit you should do it sooner rather than later as the pebbles are disappearing fast.

 

My little blog is now 2 years old!

 

Catch You Later!

Credits:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Beach_(Fort_Bragg,_California)http://www.zmescience.com/other/glass-beach-10102011/
http://soundiron.com/products/glass-beach
https://soundcloud.com/soundiron/freewayland-soundiron-glass-1
http://beachblissliving.com/best-sea-glass-beaches-america/

1972 - Part 2

Last September I posted about the 1972 Great Universal Stores mail order catalogue that I'd found. Well now I'm back with more!

This time, where possible, I've included the prices for you to compare. As most of my readers aren't from the UK here's a link to XE.com to convert £ (GBP) to your local currency:

http://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/

So let's make a start with Courtelle knitted trouser suits:

 

 

Dicel and Tricel tops and skirts. The print on the right is Aubrey Beardsleys 'The Peacock Skirt' from 1893:

 

 

 

Cotton and Dicel tops from Hardy Amies:

 

 

 

Fabulous greens from Contesa:

 

 

 

Cotton/Terylene 'young mans' jacket and trousers:

 

 

 

Yay! - Father Ted's back and looking slick:

 

 

 

Too lazy to exercise? No problem with Valor and Ablec massagers:

 

 

 

Curling tongs and stylers from Pifco and Remington, and wigs from John London:

 

 

 

Before Dyson there was, of course, Hoover. Here's their Hooverette, Constellation and Dustette:

 

 

 

Beautiful, retina-burning, electric-shock inducing nylon carpets:

 

 

 

Boom shake the room! Yes, Dunlop really did have a rubber flooring material called Semtex:

 

 

 

I hope you've enjoyed the second trip back to 1972! The next time we head back in time it'll be for the instalment you've all been waiting for - the Underwear Edition!

 

 

Catch You Later!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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