Top cat

Shelf Appeal is not just about the appeal of old things. Walking down Oxford Street the other day (or doing the Oxford Street shuffle, so busy is it) I kept spotting these super Topshop paper carrier bags.

Topshop is an interesting one. Especially to anyone interested in retail history. It has made itself a covetable high street brand available to the many. Harder than it sounds, I should think.

The Topshop flagship store that larges it over Oxford Circus is a place to people watch. If not the place to people watch. Sitting waiting for a friend outside a changing cubicle there was some of the best (fashion) fun I ever had. It is a TV documentary waiting to happen.

I like the unapologetic nature of this brand. I also like their logo design; it makes of a cheesy 1970s sounding name something mutable and changeable yet constant.

The 3D cat is one of a few recent Topshop paper bags that have been worth noticing. It is also part of the cat meme going down at Oxford Circus at the moment – this print was also available on t-shirts and iPhone cases. And other cat prints were strewn across dresses, socks and (of course) thongs.

All adding up to nothing less than the cats meow.

Unpacking Pollini

Shelf Appeal does different things with her working day. Some digital work, some writing, some curating, some things other. During Milan fashion week just gone was a project to co-curate with Penny Martin a show for Italian shoe brand Pollini, who were celebrating their 60th anniversary and showing their Autumn / Winter 2013 collection.

We named the show Unpacking Pollini, to reflect the opening up of their archive of shoes for the first time. As well the title reiterated the main visual concept for the show – a tumble of shoe boxes and shoes. As if someone had just tried on everything in the collection. This installation was backed up by blown-up archival Pollini imagery from the very early 1970s and a screen pinned with fabulous polaroids and b&w photos of shoes and bags from the 1960s – 1980s, also found in the archive.

The ‘pile of boxes’ as it became unequivocally titled, took a day or so to build from the centre out. Some 450 boxes of different sizes and covered in matt white paper became an installation reaching 7m in length and about 2.5 m at its highest. And Shelf Appeal had the not too onerous task of displaying all the archive shoes with nothing but these boxes and the palest grey tissue paper. The labels for the archive display were beautifully simple cards with dates on them. Designed (as were the rest of the exhibition graphics) by Veronica Ditting.

The show was up for 4 hours. We ran a live Shoe Social during that time, taking polaroid’s of shoes with people in them and tweeting them out and pinning them up. I snapped this very accommodating gentleman who showcased a man’s and a women’s shoe at the same time. He didn’t have to be asked twice to strike a pose.

Window shopping

Ladybird books are lovely things. They pull gently at childhood memories if you are old enough to remember reading them. For younger sorts, there is any amount of dubious Ladybird product out there now, exploiting the imagery with none of the quality and intent of the original books.

I actually have a very few Ladybird books on my shelves. Shopping with Mother and one or two others. It would be very easy to get swept in to collecting the lot. They look great lined up together and the illustrations would keep me quiet for days. But plenty of other people are archiving Ladybird books, researching the titles, authors and artists in retentive detail.

One site has some great images of Ladybird books being made and sold, where I found this gem. This contextual material is much more interesting to me than exhaustive histories of versions and series’. A bit of book. A bit of window display. What could be nicer?

This window is crammed with Ladybird books and carries the words: The Craven Herald Ltd. The Herald, it seems, is a paper that has been the ‘Voice of the Dales since 1853′. I wonder if this window was in Craven and what the occasion was for the photo? It dates from the 1950s.

Had I been there at the time a bit of nose pressing against the window would surely have been happening.

A slice of Lucienne?

Working in museums has almost cured me of collecting. I am happy for most things small and large to be in museums rather than in boxes in a cupboard near me.

I used to have many more textile and costume pieces. I was that person picking up all the interesting curtains and scarves in charity shops. But only a few framed pretties have remained in my care. This is one of them, a faded handkerchief. You might well wonder why this one stayed when others went.

Well, it’s a small handkerchief. That always helps – being small. And it’s a lovely subject and simple illustration. It is also, it seems to me, a bit of ephemeral textile. The corner reads ICI Procion. Now Procion dyes (the cold sort you use to do tie dye with) were made and made famous by ICI who patented them in 1954. So far so fair enough that they had a handkerchief made to promote them.

But this feels to me very much like a Lucienne Day design. Maybe it isn’t. But I want it to be. Not necessarily to give it design provenance, though that too. But because Lucienne’s husband Robin Day designed exhibition stands for ICI. And I jolly well love the idea she designed it for one of them. The timing is right and the subject matter is right and the style is right. The sliced pear is drawn in a manner very similar to Lucienne’s beloved leaf patterns that were strewn across her portfolio in the 50s and 60s.

Maybe she designed it as a giveaway on an ICI stand one 1950s wintertime. So people could blow cold red noses on a bit of very classy cotton.

Egg and cress

This post is about a set of things. Not often read about here, it’s true. But some things shouldn’t be separated one from their others.

In the days before cling film, shrink-wrap and other see-through plastics – food was labelled by, erm, sticking a label in it. Usually a plain label, with just the food name written upon it. Or perhaps, more often, the name and the cost of the food by weight.

I usually prefer the plain no nonsense approach to labelling. But this set of illustrated labels (all below) are the exception that prove a little bit more is sometimes a little bit more.

I have no idea where these were made, although it was somewhere ‘foreign’ as one label has that stamped on it’s back. I am not very sure of their date but I’d hazard a guess at early 1920s, judging by the plastic. And they came to me squished in to a little cardboard box from somewhere in London. They have probably lain in that box since the 1920s.

But what thought has gone in to the illustrations for such a seemingly inconsequential set of things. The egg is joyous, the egg and cress more joyous. The waving crab would sell itself to a vegetarian. The monocled salmon comes smoked, or not. One cheese seems to be turning its nose up at a smellier cheese. The ham has a tutu and the cucumber wears what appear to be hobnail boots. The poor old chicken, meanwhile, seems to be in his cooking pot already.

I can only imagine how these must have perked up the food display in a grocer shop. For they most certainly perk me up.