Silent movies - The Cat and the Canary

The title of today's film may be familiar to you as there were later remakes of it (one of them with Bob Hope), but I will of course be talking about the silent film "The Cat and the Canary" from 1927.

Here's the plot with spoilers:

Wealthy Cyrus West feels like a canary among cats surrounded by his relatives who are not only greedy, but also think he's insane.
West orders his will to be opened 20 years after his death during which only the housekeeper Mammy Pleasant lives in his creepy mansion.
When his lawyer Roger Crosby turns up to get the will out of the safe, he finds a living moth in it - and a second envelope that has to be opened if the terms of the will aren't fulfilled.

"It was the ghost who put that second envelope there!"

All the relatives have gathered, Aunt Susan and her niece Cecily, cousins Harry, Charlie, and Paul, and finally Annabelle.

Much to the others' indignation and disappointment, Annabelle, the most distant relative still bearing the name West, is the heiress of Cyrus's wealth including the famous lost West diamonds. IF she passes an doctor's examination of her sanity, that is. If she fails, everything will go to the person named in the second envelope.
Alone with her, Crosby says to Annabella that she's the one in a cage now, surrounded by cats.

Just when he wants to reveal the name in the second envelope because he's afraid of what that person might want to do to her, he gets pulled away by a clawed hand.

In the meantime, a guard has turned up warning everyone about a lunatic called "The Cat" having escaped from the asylum. He says he has followed him to the mansion.
Then Annabella informs them that Crosby has disappeared which Aunt Susan thinks is very convenient for the heiress and obviously proves she's insane (yeah, sure).

Everyone goes to their rooms, more or less scared, and guided by a note, Annabelle finds the famous diamonds in easily one of the ugliest necklaces I have ever seen. Not that this has any bearing on what happens next.

Maybe she can take it apart
for the pearls and stones?

Claw-hand steals the necklace when Annabelle is sleeping.

She tells her relatives about it and Aunt Susan thinks once more, you got it, that she's insane.
Now things happen rather quickly.
Crosby turns up dead behind a hidden door and disappears again. Mammy Pleasant goes to get the police. Aunt Susan runs away in panic and hitches a hike with a milkman before policemen on their way to the mansion pick up her up and take her back with them. Dr. Lazar turns up in the middle of the night to evaluate Annabelle. Paul enters the passage behind the hidden door which closes. In the passage he meets The Cat and gets into a fight with him, being left for dead.

That's one ugly "cat".

The Cat attacks Annabelle, but Paul is there in time to save her. The police arrives. The Cat is no lunatic, but Charlie in disguise! He had hired the guard to help him drive Annabelle insane as his name is in the second envelope.
Annabelle and Paul get a happy ending.

You probably already expected something like that. I mean today we all know Scooby-Doo, right?
Knowing what is probably going to happen, though, doesn't take away from the fun of the movie.

"The Cat and the Canary" is based on a play by John Willard from 1922 (you may remember that "The Bat" was also based on a play and those two weren't the only early horror comedy movies who were).
Paul Leni gave it his personal style, a mix of German expressionism and humor (as he already did in "Waxworks"), and he also designed the sets.
He played with darkness and light and used superimposition to evoke moods and suspense, but they also had a bit of fun with the intertitles.

Cyrus in his chair dwarfed by medicine
bottles and threatened by huge cats.

An intertitle mimicking the shaky
voice of the cab driver.

I enjoyed the mix of scary vibes and humor which is also reflected in the characters.
Paul is a bit of a fool until his love for Annabelle makes him turn into a hero.

Paul hiding under the bed - I admit
I get why it scared Aunt Susan.

Mammy Pleasant is mysterious and scary (but not in cahoots with Charlie).
Aunt Susan is especially hilarious during her ride with the milkman and then the police.
Poor Annabelle had the typical role of damsel in distress. She gets to look scared a lot, but she also shows a little courage. Honestly, I wouldn't have slept in that room by myself.

Definitely a recommendation from me!


Sources and further reading:

1. Lea Stans: Thoughts On: "The Cat And The Canary" (1927). On: Silent-ology, October 7, 2016
2. Dr Lenera: The Cat and the Canary [1927]. On: HorrorCultFilms, April 8, 2024

My March books

This is an overview of the books I have finished in a month (not necessarily started in the same month) and those I have read to Gundel (marked with 😸).
I will be adding a short explanation why I chose a book or how I found it and possibly if it's a re-read candidate, but I'm usually not going to add real reviews or ratings (Gundel also refuses to give ratings). Should you want a little more information on a book you're interested in, though, just let me know.
This month I had a very hard time concentrating on books, luckily my hands were up for more crafting to help keeping me out of my own head.


"Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines, Hollywood's First Openly Gay Star" by William J. Mann, first published in 1998

This is a biography of William Haines who was a movie star first, but a successful interior designer - or decorator how he preferred to be called - for much longer after having to leave the movie business for which one reason was his refusal to play the game. He was unapologetically gay and lived openly with his partner Jimmie Shields until his death.

I had watched a documentary about William Haines long before I even started watching silent movies and found his story really interesting.
It's not interesting enough for 400 pages, though, simply because most of his friends couldn't be interviewed for this book anymore, so a lot of information is lost, and of course you could never really trust information spread by the film studios.
So there's really a lot more "could", "might", "it is said" than I'd expect of a biography.
What bothered me even more, though, was the author listing a lot of Hollywood stars who were gay or lesbian repeatedly in a way that sometimes reminded me more of a tabloid. I would have preferred to read more details about Haines's career as a designer and less about other people's love life  given that this is supposed to be a Haines biography.
Still an interesting read.

"Lilien auf dem Felde" = "Lilies of the Field" by William E. Barrett, first published in 1962

Homer Smith, just out of the US Army, heads out to see the West. He sleeps in his station wagon and only takes up short jobs here and there if he needs money.
One day he comes to a rundown farm where five nuns live who came from an order in East Germany. Although he had only planned to make a little money by helping out, he's drawn into the Mother Superior's plan to build a chapel.

A re-read of this novella for a blog post.

"The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek" by Kim Michele Richardson, first published in 2019

Eastern Kentucky in the 1930s.
Cussy Mary Carter, also called Bluet, is a book woman, hired as a packhorse librarian who delivers books to remote areas of the Appalachian Mountains as part of the Works Progress Administration program.
She's also a "Blue" meaning she has a blue skin tone due to a rare genetic disorder which evokes hate and fear in others.

I had read both about the Fugate Blues and the packhorse librarian program before, so when I saw this book mentioned in a blog, I decided to read it (and am happy to report that the mule is fine).

"The Three Investigators in The Mystery of the Laughing Shadow" by William Arden (the books were published attributed to Alfred Hitchcock), first published in 1969 😸
(The Three Investigators 12)

This new case begins with Bob and Peter hearing a cry for help, seeing a strange shadow with a crazy laugh, and finding a gold amulet with a strange message.
Will the boys solve the mystery of the legendary Chumash Hoard?

I read this series a long time ago and am going through it again bit by bit after writing a blog post about it. This book is the twelfth in the series.

"The Thirty-Nine Steps" by John Buchan, first published in 1915

Richard Hannay has just come to London from Rhodesia and he's bored until an American tells him about an assassination plot before being killed himself. Hannay has to escape both the police and the force behind the plot. Will he be able to prevent the assassination?

When I mentioned my Hitchcock binge the other day, a friend drew my attention to the books some of the movies are based on.
In this case, I have to say I enjoyed the movie much more.

"The Home" by Penelope Mortimer, first published in 1971

Left by her husband Graham who's gone to live with a 22 year old after a long marriage, Eleanor is trying to make her new house a home for herself and her children even though her eldest son and her three daughters are grown up and looking for a life of their own and her 15 year old son is mostly away at school.
She finds, however, that she's devastated by the separation and struggles with beginning a new life.

Liz from Adventures in Reading, Running, and Working from Home has introduced me to the "British Library Women Writers" series (I found she had reviewed this book here after I had read it). I had a look which of the novels I could find rather easily, this was one of them.

"A Cast of Killers" by Sidney Kirkpatrick, first published in 1986

In 1922, film director William Desmond Taylor was found in his bungalow shot dead. The murder caused scandals and ended careers, it was never solved.
In the 60s, film director King Vidor tried to solve the case in order to turn it into a movie which he didn't do in the end. Kirkpatrick used Vidor's collected documents and notes to tell the story.

There's a newsletter called "Taylorology" for this case and issue 65 points out all the errors or omissions of the 1986 edition and encourages people to read the corrected 20th Anniversary edition instead.
As I stumbled upon this book by accident, I only knew about that after reading it, but I'm usually sceptical about publications that solve a cold case after decades, anyway, so although this is officially non-fiction, I didn't read it as such (I may read at least one other book on the case eventually), but still (or rather because of it?) enjoyed it.

"The Rainfall Market" by You Yeong-Kwang, first published in 2024

Serin has lost her father early, she and her mother are poor, and Serin is convinced her life is utterly useless.
Then she gets a golden ticket for the mysterious Rainfall Market where she will be able to exchange her life for another one, aided by the cat Issha.

This was another new entry on OverDrive.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets Studio Ghibli vibes from this even if it's a Korean book. While reading, I practically saw the Dokkaebi in the Ghibli style before my inner eye.
A cute, light and quick read.

"The Devil's Mill" by Walt Unsworth, first published in 1968 😸

England, the middle of the 18th century.
After a carriage accident, a 14 year old boy makes it to a farm in the Peak District. He has lost his memory and the farmer couple names him Jeremy after their late son. As they have failed to make the adoption official, however, Jeremy gets indentured and sent to a cotton mill as an apprentice.
During a riot, the mill burns down and the owner blames Jeremy who escapes thanks to the help of new friends. His adventures are not over yet, though.

When I looked for a different book on The Internet Archive, I found one of Unsworth's three middle grade novels about the Industrial Revolution, "Grimsdyke". I liked it, looked for the others and found this one as well (not the third one, though, "Whistling Clough").
Like "Grimsdyke" it didn't disappoint.

"The Case of the Heavenly Twin" by Christopher Bush, first published in 1962

Private detective Ludovic Travers is called upon in a fraud case in which several forged traveller's checks have been used.
Then an old friend of his dies and Travers is hired to find one of his grandsons. During the search he stumbles upon more forged checks. Are the cases connected?

I had never heard of Christopher Bush before - as far as I remember - when Liz from Adventures in Reading, Running, and Working from Home reviewed one of his books for a 1952 challenge. Now there are a few of his books on my reading list.

"The List of Suspicious Things" by Jennie Godfrey, first published in 2024

It's the 70s in Yorkshire and people are scared of the Yorkshire Ripper.
12 year old Miv decides that she and her best friend Sharon have to try to find him with the help of the "list of suspicious things" she puts down in her notebook as they learn more and more about their neighborhood and life.

A new entry at OverDrive.
I liked the book as such, maybe because the friendship reminded me of my friendships of my own - and no, I never went looking for a serial killer - but I think I would have liked it better with not quite so many triggers crammed in. Sometimes I have the feeling authors can't stop themselves and pile up things, I've noticed that in books, but also movies and TV shows. There is such a thing as "too much".

"Die Herren Pudels"

"Die Herren Pudels" is not correct German if you wonder (it ought to be "Pudel"), it's an affectionate nickname for my favorite poodles. You could translate it as "The Misters Poodles" (staying in line with the wrong grammar), but they would probably prefer the translation "The Masters Poodles" because masters they are - Kosimo and Nemo Black Power vom Glashütter Täle.
Their humans have helped me out more than once, and as I had still one of my small bottles standing around, I thought I'd bead a poodle bottle for them as a little thank you.

I looked at poodle drawings and silhouettes online to get a feeling for the outlines and then made my own pattern of Kosel and Nemo looking at one another. So far so good.
As they are white despite their name (more on that later), I wanted a dark background. I hadn't thought it through completely when I chose gunmetal for it, though, which I noticed when I came to their black noses. I was not prepared to rip up rows and rows of beads. In the right light you can see the noses, but they don't look quite as pointy as they would have with a better contrast which actually works quite well. Lucky me.
It didn't work as well for the collars. The heads kind of looked as if they were floating, so I actually had to rip out those few rows again. I went for slimmer collars in a dark red instead.

No fancy fashion poodle haircuts on these two!

On the back I added a few hearts and a few silver beads.

If you have seen my other beaded bottles, you may have noticed a difference between them and this one.
Usually the beading goes all the way up over the shoulder and neck. I start on the pattern to make sure I position it right - some patterns are a full image which means I have background rows at the bottom or they show just a part of something like here where the poodles go all the way to the bottom - then I do the shoulder and neck and after that I finish the bottom which is never fully closed, by the way.
The bottles I have made so far are never meant to hold any liquid but mostly as decoration although I can put needles in them for example or something else that fits through the neck.

In this case, however, I thought it would be a cute little vase for a single blossom or also a few, such as daisies (as a kid, I liked to bring my mom tiny daisy "bouquets"). The poodle humans love plants.
So I stopped beading at the shoulder which means it's like one of those cooling sleeves now, you can just pull the bottle out if you need to clean it. I actually like the idea.

I felt that the beading needed a nice edge now, though.
Pink crystals were the natural choice because Kosel is 1. the sparkle master with his rhinestone on black collar (Nemo has white Swiss crosses on black) and 2. he loves pink. I have a pair of pink slippers standing in the hallway and he has stolen one of them more than once.

There was just one problem. I couldn't do a symmetrical edge because I have a prime number of beads. So instead it became an asymmetrical "crown" which fits the noble lineage of the masters 😉

Now the promised explanation for the name.
I have often wondered why some animals have such crazy names (cats are an exception, they deserve the most wonderful and craziest names there are), like horses or purebred dogs, and I don't want to miss out on the chance to tell you the names of Kosel's and Nemo's parents (with their humans' permission).
Kosel's father is named Decathlon Alfredo Magdalena, his mother Iska Black Power vom Glashütter Täle.
Nemo's father is Begin to Dream Love me Tender (a beautiful French poodle also called Merlin) and his mother is Kosel's sister Kosima Black Power vom Glashütter Täle.
The lady Kosel and Nemo came from actually used to have black poodles and then fell in love with the dark eyes of white poodles, but didn't want to change the name.

What's next?
Well, I have a plan, a WIP, and the beginning of a small experiment, so I can't even tell you what it will be, but I hope you'll be here when I can!

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot - Week 149

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

Happy International Whisk(e)y Day!
I'm not kidding. The event was announced in 2008 and launched March 27, 2009 in honor of English whisky and beer writer Michael Jackson. Don't confuse it with the World Whisky Day in May, though.
So here we go - cheers!

Are you ready for the weekend?

As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week our spotlight is on Huisvlijt.

Nicole from Huisvlijt says: "Al ruim 20 jaar blog ik op Huisvlit over alles waar je in het leven mee te maken krigt. Van praktische ..." Oh, excuse me, haven't I mentioned that Nicole is in the Netherlands? No worries, you can easily switch to English on her blog! Let's try this again. "For over 20 years, I have been blogging on Huisvlijt about everything you encounter in life. From practical matters to personal things. Huisvlijt offers practical information, inspiration, and recognition from personal experience. ... Nicole Orriëns: UU psychologist, mother and professional blogger. I studied psychology at Utrecht University and obtained my Master's degree in psychology there in 1993. On my blogs, I combine my academic background with daily life."

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Lisa is talking about giving the benefit of the doubt.

If you are not ready for going grey yet, Alison has some tips on grey blending for you.

I have never read Laura Ingalls Wilder's books myself (and only watched a few episodes), but if you are a fan, Lisa's post about "Pa" Ingalls might be interesting for you.

Do you love bookshops? Lydia shows you a special one in Venice.


Let's link up!

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Silent movies - Princess Nicotine or The Smoke Fairy

I have another really short film for you today. It's a little weird but fun - "Princess Nicotine or The Smoke Fairy" from 1909 (I do not endorse smoking with this post, just watching silent films).

In the early days of film people very obviously liked to play around with the new medium - just think of the Méliès films I have already talked about - and this short is no exception.
We have a runtime of a little more than five minutes, so you can imagine there's not much of a plot.

A man falls asleep next to his smoking table - I call it that because it holds several smoking utensils. Those were the days when you needed a pipe, cigarettes, and cigars!
The cigar box holds a surprise, though. Two tiny fairies emerge, ready for some mischief.
The older fairy takes the tobacco out of the pipe and helps the younger one to climb in.

The man wakes up again and tries to light his pipe, but it doesn't work, so he taps it on the table and the little fairy comes back out. He notices the fairies hiding in the cigar box, so he opens it takes out a flower which is blowing smoke at him, it's our little fairy!
The man starts blowing smoke at her and threatening her with a match, she reacts by showing him her bottom.

Then she builds up a stack of matches and sets it on fire. The man uses seltzer water to put out the fire first and then spritzing the fairy, but in the end he spritzes himself.

Today a lot of people probably think of all fairies like a kind of Disney Tinkerbell, but in the old days fairies and elves were not regarded as kind and cute.
Fairies can be mischievous, mean, or downright dangerous.
They kidnap children and leave changelings behind instead (of course today we know that this was one way to explain if children were "different" in any way), but they also lure adults into their world from which they are not able to return or a long time has gone by in the real world once they do return.
Compared to that, our little fairies are still pretty harmless although this one went a bit overboard with her revenge plan.

Hidden wires, giant props, stop motion, double exposures, mirrors, and smoke - there are a lot of tricks in this short film.
It didn't fail to impress.
"Scientific American" published an article with the title "Some Tricks of the Moving Picture Maker" about it, and in his 1912 book "Moving Pictures, How They Are Made and Worked", Frederick Talbot called it "one of the finest trick films ever made in the United States".

Fun to watch!


Sources:

Fritzi Kramer: Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy (1909). A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, April 25, 2017

Nostalgia - Memories of writing

A while ago, an American friend and I started talking about school memories. The starting point had been my mentioning that my handwriting had seriously deteriorated since I mostly wrote things by hand that only I needed to be able to read and that I wanted to go back to my fountain pen, mostly for letters, after I have been neglecting it lately.

From the fountain pen we got to differences in our school systems (of course I can't list all of them here).
Something that never ceases to surprise me when I see it in a TV show or a movie are pencils in US schools. Not that we didn't use pencils of course, but not for as long and not as much and definitely not in tests. As far as I know, pencils are still not allowed in tests here.
The following is such an American picture to me (as I don't know which other countries also use pencils). I honestly can't remember if I ever did a multiple choice test in school at all. From what I read and heard they are still hardly used in German schools, but you find them at universities.

Picture by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu via Unsplash

I can't remember for sure in which class we started learning to use a fountain pen in the early 70s, but at first we had a plastic slate and a white pencil like the ones in the picture. The times of real slates and slate pencils were already over then.
These are not my original slates, I found them at the fleamarket (as you can clearly tell from the condition) and the pencils are new. Much to my surprise both plastic slates and pencils are still available and are also still used, mostly in the first class. I guess this old dinosaur had expected kids to start writing on tablets right away these days 😉
If you wrote on a slate that was still wet, your handwriting would get all fat and "creamy". I doubt I was the only kid ever playing around with that effect, but it was discouraged because it wore the pencil down more quickly.

Surprise - cursive writing is not all the same everywhere and
at all times. This is how I learned it in the olden days. 

The back - either with squares for numbers or empty for drawing.
As you can see, I'm a pro in both.

I found quite a bit of debate online on German pages about when to start teaching children how to use a fountain pen. There are even some schools - although they really seem to be the minority - that start in the first class, others let children use the slate for some things, but also paper with a pencil, then a rollerball, and the fountain pen follows in second or third class. "Ink killers" are usually not allowed.
My father had bought my first fountain pen for me and even got it engraved with my name which made it really special for me as my name was never on anything, due to its spelling.

It was a red "Pelikano" and I hadn't been aware that the red color - which was meant to appeal to the girls more than the blue one - had only been sold since September 1970 which was when I started school. I wouldn't be surprised if it's still tucked away somewhere here, but it wasn't fit for writing anymore. Should I find it, I'll add a picture.

In my time, you either had a Pelikan or a Geha pen (both German brands at the time) and you defended it to the death. The death of the fountain pen, I mean. Seriously, you can still read accounts of throwing matches to determine which brand was better! Less violent was arguing about the colors (Pelikano blue or red, later also black, Geha green) or about the fact that the Geha was the first one to have a viewing window (which I still find ugly because it disturbs the flow of the pen for me and yes, I know I'm talking about a "school pen") and a reserve tank.
I can't remember any matches in my own class, but there was a certain rivalry. Don't forget, we are talking about elementary school kids here.

While those two certainly made up the bulk of pupils' pens at the time, though, there were other brands as well, my sister for example had an Artus Prinz.
All of them had cartridges, I don't think I knew anyone who still used an inkwell then. You could use the Pelikan cartriges in a Geha, by the way, but not the Geha ones in the Pelikano. Pff. Made the Geha kids feel so special, but they gladly borrowed cartridges from us if theirs were empty 😉
I also remember my English pen pal sending me some cartridges, but I couldn't use them because they were too long. I don't know anymore what kind of pen they were meant for.

These days I use a Parker. I'm not a fan of fat ballpoint or fountain pens to write with (but sometimes to look at) and have always preferred the feel of a slim Parker in my hand.
It has a cartridge/converter filling system and I use a converter with ink bottles. It reminds me of my teenage days when my friend and I hung out at the office supply store (I wrote about us buying sealing wax there before which is part of my writing memories, but I don't want to repeat myself here). They had Pelikan ink bottles back then with different colors of ink. I have always enjoyed writing in other colors even in school and back then I wanted all of those bottles so badly - those expensive little bottles, sigh.
Nowadays I'm much more sensible and know how to limit myself meaning I only got "Intense Black" and "Tender Purple". Eight years ago! I only ever used my fountain pen for scribbling a short thank you when I sent off one of my jewelry pieces or on rare cards I wrote. Now that I have pen pals again, I finally have an excuse to buy more.
There's just one problem with ink and me, especially when I'm filling my Parker. I'm terrible at it. The last time I had to walk around with two nails rimmed in purple for three days because the ink just wouldn't scrub off! A small price to pay for being elegant enough to use an inkwell 😂

My handwriting has changed just a tad. At least
it's a little better with a fountain pen than a ballpoint.

For some extra nostalgia I'll show you how we learned to read and spell in my time. This so-called "Lese-Uhr" = "reading clock" was made by a local manufacturer for "learning aids and school games", E. Kuhlemann.

There were several versions over the years, but I can't tell you the time period when they were actually used in school (it ended sometime in the 70s, though, as my (not so) little brother didn't use it) or where exactly, but from a talk about them I know it was definitely not in all of Germany - different states, different rules - but also not just in my state.
I could already read when I started school, so I don't remember how helpful the clock actually was, but we did have fun with it.

This was the one I had. Blue plastic with
print letters. It's the one that is still rather
easy to find today, usually in quite good
condition and even with the original paper
jacket which had instructions how to use it.

I had only seen this one in museum pictures
for years, it's the older cardboard version
(which belonged to a school, there's a stamp
and inventory number). There are a few
differences from the newer one, like the
colored letters for example or the cover picture. 

This is a newer version with cursive
letters. There's no jacket, but two sheets
with explanations and exercises for the
teacher with synthetic teaching methods.

There were also big ones for the teachers which came in both cursive and print letters as well.

Picture via Wikipedia by Pomona under CC BY-SA 3.0,
taken at Museum Schönholthausen in Finnentrop 

Saarländisches Schulmuseum
This one is almost 3 feet high and made from
hardboard and coated cardboard.

And of course I have to end this post with my wax seal ... For those who hadn't seen it yet, do you recognize the image?