This gentle poster is on display in my studio. It came from a large vintage book. I am not sure who the photographer was.
This work of art really resonates with me because of:
- The collection of white jars and vases. I have my own quite large collection!
- The piles of paper - It's what I work with almost every day.
- The touch of orange - I've had a love-hate-love affair with that colour. I'm in love with orange at the moment. So much so that I have bought an orange jacket for this winter. [Lets see if I'm still passionate about this larger-than-life colour by the time Spring arrives!]
I am a collector of vintage How-to books. I love the hand drawn diagrams and antiquated pics. I love to catch glimpses of the history of modern crafts and I guess I am hopeful of perhaps rediscovering a forgotten craft.
What a great find the Book - Secrets of Origami has been. The edition that I have was printed in 1971, but a reprint of the same book is still available today. It was one of many books written and illustrated by South African born Londoner, Magician and Origami artist Robert Harbin.
My first project from this book was a number of these sweet paper tea pots. I used squares of pretty vintage hand lettering paper.
I so enjoyed this public holiday project on Easter Monday. I finally got round to covering a very old, unused, but sentimental set of World Book Encyclopaedias.
I decided to update them with a Bauhaus font. Each book was covered in a light white cardboard sleeve, sourced from my local printer, who keeps the waste printed-on-one-side-only paper for me. The letters were printed onto white sticker paper, and stuck onto the spine of each book.
I had covered my set of Golden Hands craft books a while back, but added stencil-print numbers to them too. I like the calming rhythmic repetition and the fact that they now all add white bright white light to a darkish room in the house!
As soon as we got back
from the Design Indaba, we had 2 weeks to get some orders out, before
heading to our timeshare in Mpumalanga. We had a wonderful family week
away.
But now we are back into full swing - cultivating paper flowers.
