Nostalgia - Dot, dot, comma, dash

Some years ago when I still did the "Finds of the week" posts, I had some called "I'm a collector" in which I shared vintage items. Over time my collections have mostly stopped growing due to different reasons, but they are still there and still loved. I also have vintage items, some inherited, some gifts, some from fleamarkets, some more interesting than others. So I thought it could be fun to share some of them every, now and then and tell their story.

Today's item is a book that was first published in 1944, but is still available today, both printed and as an ebook!
I read up on its author for the first time and was quite surprised.
The book is called "Punkt, Punkt, Komma, Strich" and is by Hans Witzig.
The title refers to a little phrase or song - I couldn't find out where or when it is from - which goes "Punkt, Punkt, Komma, Strich, fertig ist das Mondgesicht" (there are small variations) which translates to "Dot, dot, comma, dash, done is the moon face". Thinking about it now, this is still pretty much what I add to little notes I write instead of a smiley.

The author's name sounds like a pseudonym as "Witzig" means "Funny", but it was indead his real name. Dr. Hans Witzig was a Swiss art historian, artist, art teacher, and author who lived from 1889 to 1973.
I got his book as a child and I loved it. The subtitle tells us it's "drawing lessons for children". I can't remember actually learning how to draw from it, but I enjoyed the lessons in theory. Actually, that was a point critics made, that children used his drawing books just as story and coloring books and maybe copied drawings from them, but that the detailed instructions did not help them to get truly creative.

Where my copy went, who knows, but it must have been very worn. Eventually I got nostalgic enough to get myself an old edition from 1969, from around the same time I got mine (mere coincidence).
This copy has an inscription "Für gute Leistungen im Schuljahr 1969/70 erhält Annette D**** als Anerkennung diesen Preis - M******" (Annette D**** receives this prize in recognition of her good performance in the 1969/70 school year - M******). I started school in 1970, so Annette must have been a little older than I, also in my time there weren't book prizes anymore, at least not in my town.
(And a few days later Gundel threw up on it, so I probably shouldn't have taken the one in the best condition *headdesk* but that's what I get for keeping books in bed, I guess.)

Actually, Witzig did a lot more than teach and write books teaching children how to draw.
He illustrated primers and fairy tale books and published picture books of his own some of which achieved many editions.
For a YA crime book about superstitions in the Baden area in 1700 he got an award.
Beside engaging in teaching and creating for children, however, there was a completely different side to his work as well.

He designed ex libris for friends, but also election posters, he made political caricatures, but also advertisement. He was socially aware and supported humanitarian causes by illustrating publications, for example for the Red Cross.
As a sculptor he created figurines for example for fountains, but also after drawings of the artist Honoré Daumier.
After World War I, he created dark drawings with the "Dance of Death" theme some of which were published in the "Totentanz" poem collection by Wiegand, but weren't made specifically for it.
In 1933, he self-published 60 drawings showing the misery of the population between the wars.
From what I read, he never stopped working until his death.
In 2023, there was an exhibition about his life and work and I bet it was really interesting.

It's not the first time I look up an author of one of the childrens' books in my collection, but this time I really hadn't expected to find this much.
Maybe I'm the only one reading my nostalgia posts, but that doesn't matter because I'm learning so much from preparing them and I really enjoy doing the research.


Selected sources (in German):

1. Anna Lehninger: Einmal grad und einmal krumm : zu Leben und Werk von Hans Witzig. In: Vom Schlaraffenland zum Totentanz. Der Zürcher Zeichenlehrer und Illustrator Hans Witzig. Mitteilungen der Antiquarischen Gesellschaft in Zürich 90(2023)

2. Anna Lehninger: Punkt, Punkt, Komma Strich : Hans Witzig als Autor, Illustrator und Zeichner. In: Librarium : Zeitschrift der Schweizerischen Bibliophilen-Gesellschaft 61(2018), pp. 104 - 117

3. Anton Beck: Der Zeichner Hans Witzig prägte den Kunstunterricht. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung vom 17.3.2023

Tassels

When I was a child, my grandma had a table cloth with long, heavy tassels. I loved them and could spend hours (actually probably not hours, but it seemed like it to me then) braiding them, unraveling the braids and braiding them again. They were so shiny and pretty.

Although I own a book about beaded tassels that a friend gave me to me, I never made anything from it because I didn't know what to do with a tassel. To make something with real thread tassels, never crossed my mind at all - until our JAC challenge mistress picked the topic "Tassels or PomPoms" for the November/December challenge.
Pompoms, pom-poms, pom-pons, pompons - feel free to choose your favorite spelling - were right out. I have pompom makers for two different sizes because I thought I could make some myself for Gundel and den Dekan to play with, but was never very good with the cardboard rings, but even with pro equipment I either suck at it or der Dekan is extremely good at disassembling pompoms. It's probably both. Anyway, I'm a bit miffed with pompoms now, so I had to pick tassels.

Of course I could have grabbed my book now and fight my way through instructions, something I don't have much patience for, also I remembered that all of the projects would have called for a bead order, another thing I didn't have the patience for at the moment (bead orders take me really long because I am obsessed with not forgetting anything, not that that ever works out).
I also didn't want to order a bunch of thread tassels most of which I would probably never use, and I definitely didn't want to make any myself if I didn't have to.

I know, that sounds as if I wasn't very motivated, but that wasn't it. I thought I would definitely do some kind of beaded tassel, only not quite as ambitious as the ones in the book.
Then, however, I remembered that I had bought a strand of beads sometime ago that had thread tassels on each end and that I had kept them after cutting up the strand. Lucky me because now I just had to come up with something for the top!

That's where my advent calendar from 2022 comes in, the Christmas Bells, to be precise. How about using their top part for inspiration and building something up from crystals - firepolished instead of bicones - and seed beads?
So that's what I did, with the help of a Christmas movie for background noise (Hallmark which one of our TV channels is running up and down right now, so I didn't have to worry about not catching important information, and guess what, there was a happy ending 🤣).
I think they fit the festive season quite well and I promise not to braid the threads!

Found another one!

I'm getting good at this cryptid hunting!
Can you believe that I just took a little walk in the woods and there he was? I didn't even know there were Bigfoots in German woods!
Unfortunately I didn't have my camera on me, so I just had to run home real quickly and embroider the moment he walked away from me as long as the image was still fresh in my mind.
Okay, you got me there. The idea of me running is more than ridiculous, and actually I have never heard of a Bigfoot in Germany, either.

The last part is true, however, I embroidered the moment, let's say, he could have walked away from me, disappearing between the trees of the "Oberholz", our local forest.

Do you have a feeling I'm having too much fun with my embroidery? Not serious enough?
Just you wait for my next project that I have planned for my vacation. Although I'm not sure at all that it's going to be working out the way I'm imagining it now, I'm really looking forward to give it a try.
Of course there is also the very serious whiteworking class which I saved for the vacation.

Then there is this one - could it be the paw of a cryptid cat? ;-)
Oh yes, there are cryptid felines as well ... hmm .... where is my list of ideas ...

Birdie

I am stressed and I'm anxious these days. I'm a pro at both, but this is no competition and even if it were, being the winner would be a pretty dubious honor.
Right now I'm just happy about my furnace not having gone out since Mr. Heater was here yesterday, for a slurpy kitty to one side - Gundel is the loudest groomer ever - and another one feeling like the weight of a standard sandbag on my feet which beats a weighted blanket and a hot-water bottle (no, he's not really as heavy as a sandbag, but cats manage to change gravity, I'm sure, still remembering how incredibly heavy Ponder's head on my wrist used to be).

I have two personal solutions for being stressed.
Sleeping to block out the world. Too bad if it creeps into my dreams, but usually they are just very weird and not nightmares ... snippets of the one this morning are coming back to me right now which make me wonder when I got a dog? There have been cats, from my own to huge lions and of course black panthers in my dreams, also other animals like wolves, but never a dog. Interesting.
The other one is hoping for my muse to jump in and give me not only an idea - I have enough of those - but also the energy to work on something.
If you are wondering, I know about those people who fight stress with cleaning their whole house, but I can safely say no amount of stress or worry in the world has ever managed to make me do that, despite my half-Swabian ancestry.

As my blog is mostly about crafting, I will not go into my dreams in detail, lucky you, but talk about my last piece.
This is the second bead embroidery piece that started out on my embroidery hoop. It also inspired me to write another nostalgia post, but I'm still waiting for something to finish that one, just this much, it's about shapes, as is my pendant.

Give me a drop and I will see a bird body.
It has happened before, in my paint cabochon and Cantera opal bird pin for example.

And this time it happened with a labradorite drop. This time, however, I wanted to be a bit less neutral with my colors. So I chose a light amethyst for the head, gold accents, and a bright purple as a contrast to the body.
Yeah, and then I was stuck because I put the head on differently than in the pin and couldn't decide if I wanted to add legs or not. I did some hand embroidery instead, but kept coming back to my birdie apologizing for leaving it on that hoop for so long. Then I worked on the sparkly heart and apologized to my birdie for leaving it in a drawer for so long. I'm weird, I really do talk to my WIPs and I often talk to myself while working on something because it helps me think.

When I finally got the bird back out of the drawer, we sat down for a serious talk ;-)
In order to make a decision about the legs, I first had to think about the tail. Did I want it short or long? Why did I even have to think about it, everyone knows I can't resist a fringe! Having a fringe for the tail, though, meant that dangly legs were out and Birdie needed something to perch on.

I beaded a twig and added some embellishments in form of blossoms.
As I planned to make the tail pick up the colors of the head with golden seed and matte amethyst beads, I wanted the twig to be more subdued using bronze tone flower beads topped with tiny amethysts. Birds have so many different colors and sometimes they only partially have brightly colored spots to get attention; and I wanted him to get the attention, not the twig.
Also my first idea had been berries for the twig, but again I didn't want the colors to compete with the tail.

I guess Birdie is ready to fly!

Kitty ornaments

Ornament season has started!
Actually though, I won't be making Christmas ornaments this year, except if I want to give one as a gift.
After making so many for my advent calendar last December, but not wanting to take chances with putting any up here in the flat thanks to somecat, I may run into a space problem in my hallway, anyway ;-)

These two beautiful painted wooden cats made by Rachel from The Glass Cavern, however - you may remember her from the ammonite in this post - asked to be turned into ornaments.
You can never go wrong with stars, but I don't think they necessarily turn these beauties into ornaments specifically for Christmas, they are still suitable for being hung up throughout the year instead.

About once a year I try to send a parcel with items to a cat rescue for their charity shop and these two will be included this time.
I really hope they will find the right cat people to love them! I know I'm having a hard time letting those cute faces go.

Nostalgia - Nipper

Some years ago when I still did the "Finds of the week" posts, I had some called "I'm a collector" in which I shared vintage items. Over time my collections have mostly stopped growing due to different reasons, but they are still there and still loved. I also have vintage items, some inherited, some gifts, some from fleamarkets, some more interesting than others. So I thought it could be fun to share some of them every, now and then and tell their story.

Nipper has been living on my cupboard for many years since we brought him home from a fleamarket.

He was not a bargain, but we fell in love with him at first sight, went away from him, came back, circled him and finally gave up resisting his pull.
I have to admit not remembering where we got his little brother who lost an ear in an accident, no doubt cat-related.

There was a Nipper in our house before him, one the ex had also fallen in love with early on in our Steiff collecting times, only he wasn't called Nipper, but Electrola Fox.
He doesn't live here anymore, but I still have a picture of him.

No wonder he loved him, he's really cute, isn't he?

Who was Nipper, however, and how did he become so famous that there are loads of collectibles of him out there - and one or the other giant statue?!

Photo of Nipper

Nipper was the dog of Mark Barraud, a theater scene painter, born in Bristol in 1884 (Nipper, not Mark). Although he's often called a fox terrier (see Steiff), he really seems to have been a terrier mix and he got his name from his habit to nip people's legs. I have no doubt that he was still a very good boy, though.
He was good enough for Barraud's brother Francis, a painter, to take in Nipper when Mark died in 1887, but later Mark's widow asked to take Nipper back to keep her company and took him to Kingston upon Thames where the avid ratter died and was buried in September 1895.

Eventually Francis painted a picture of him (the building at 126 Piccadilly even has a blue plaque today) and registered it with the name "Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph".
Some sources claim Barraud then offered the painting to Edison Bell for advertisement while others say the phonograph company was never specified in any remaining communication. Whatever the truth is, the offer was refused.
Someone suggested to put in a golden brass trumpet instead of the black phonograph horn for a more pictorial effect, so Barraud went to The Gramophone Company to borrow such a trumpet. He showed a photograph of the painting and was asked if he would change the phonograph to a gramophone which he agreed to if the company bought the painting.

Photograph of the original painting with phonograph
(public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

After some back and forth, the company sent a machine round to Francis and history was made.

But did Nipper actually listen to recordings of "His (dead) Master's Voice" as you can often read?
Actually, sources don't agree on that information, either. It seems Barraud's niece said that Mark actually never made a recording of his voice, but that Nipper had often been sitting at the door like this instead as if waiting for his master.
There were also rumors that the shiny surface Nipper is sitting on is Mark's coffin, but all the sources I browsed or read agree on that really just being a tale.
So what about "His Master's Voice"? Had the creator of this slogan really being Francis Barraud or was it indeed the winner of a slogan contest? Who knows? There were even several people claiming to be the original painter.

The altered and final version of Barraud's painting
(public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Barraud painted several more Nippers for different company offices.

Speaking of different companies, you may hear more than one name in connection with the Nipper logo, that is due to developments and copyright transfers in the music industry - RCA in the USA, Victor in Japan, and EMI in Europe until they sold the trade mark to the independent HMV stories (HMV for His Master's Voice).

There are Nipper statues in different places connected with these companies, one of them looking very similar to mine, a 5.5 meter fiberglass statue at The Old Vinyl Factory, a site that used to belong to EMI.
And of course Nipper is on gramophone needle tins, needle sharpeners, key rings, fabric, matchboxes, pins, and much more, there are whole books on thousands of items.
Oh, and he's on magnets - on my fridge for example ;-)

Today RCA's Nipper even has a little puppy brother, Chipper.

If you want to dive in a bit more deeply, I recommend the last publication in my reference list.

Sources:
London Remembers - Nipper (buried)
London Remembers - Francis Barraud & Nipper
Wikipedia - English and German
Erik Østergaard - The History of Nipper and His Master's Voice
My London article from July 14, 2024
RCA - Nipper and Chipper
The story of 'Nipper' and the 'His Master's Voice' picture painted by Francis Barraud - compiled by Leonard Petts (1973 when Petts was archivist at EMI)

Comfy, Cozy Cinema 2024 - Holiday

Comfy, Cozy Cinema is a collaboration of Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.
They have a list of movies to watch for September and October. I was late to the game and not having subscribed to any streaming platforms, I probably wouldn't have been able to watch everything, anyway - but even though they had chosen "Skylark" for today, a movie I haven't even heard of, they couldn't watch it after all. So instead they watched "Bringing Up Baby" with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. Now as much as I love Cary, that's not one of my favorite movies. It's alright, but a tad too hectic for my taste.
I chose a different Grant/Hepburn movie instead, "Holiday", also from 1938.
 

From Wikipedia: The poster art copyright is believed to belong
to the distributor of the film, Columbia Pictures,
the publisher of the film or the graphic artist.

The movie begins right after two of the characters come back from a winter holiday in Lake Placid where they have fallen madly in love with one another, so madly that they want to get married as soon as possible - Johnny and Julia. We are informed about that whirlwind romance during Johnny visiting his friends, the Porters ... sorry, the Potters (that's an inside joke you'll understand if you know the movie).

There's just one little catch. Johnny has been working since he was ten after losing his father and is longing for a break to enjoy it while he is still young (Lake Placid was his first holiday ever) and Julia is a rich New York socialite who is used to status and of course money.
Unfortunately she knows about Johnny's past while she seems to have forgotten to tell him how very rich her family is. He only finds out when he gets to the address she has given him, a huge estate. Thinking she must be working there, he even goes to the back entrance!
However, Johnny is not even that concerned about Julia's money at first because he's so sure she will follow him into his dream holiday while she didn't even bother mentioning her money because she has already planned out his future like a business deal. Clearly they haven't talked very much.

So - will Julia's father go along with this prospective son-in-law? Will he say yes or no? Will it help that Johnny is working in the financial sector at the moment and the Setons happen to have a bank? Most important, will they find a common goal and will their love be strong enough?

Julia's older sister Linda is sure of it. To her, stuck in a life that makes her feel like a prisoner, living in a house like a museum, Johnny is like a fresh wind, and when he tells her about his dream of taking a holiday once he has enough money for it and go back to work when he's old, she loves the idea and is excited for Julia to have found a man who will take her away from her old life.

Ned, the youngest, forced to give up his dreams of being a musician and bound to a desk at the bank instead, thanks to the questionable honor of being the only male descendant, is more cynical about all of it. Despite having chosen alcohol as his personal escape, he is amazingly clear about the others' feelings at times.

By now you have probably already guessed that Johnny and Linda are really the main characters. Although Linda does everything to convince Julia that this is an enormous chance for her and that she and Johnny belong together, we already know how this is going to end, how this probably had to end, with or without Linda.
Two people falling in love with beauty and charm, but with very different ideas of life and not able to compromise. Mind you, Johnny gives it a short try, but Julia and her father don't want to move a step, so he decides he can't do it after all. What could a real compromise even look like, torn between total freedom and work/money?

Now (back) to two people I have mentioned only shortly, but who are not only important being Johnny's best friends, they also make for some of the funniest scenes of the movie. Sorry if I have given you the idea so far that this is just a sad movie because it isn't, but it's also no pure screwball comedy.
The Porters ... uhm, Potters both teach at university. They are witty and uncoventional, and from when they enter the "museum" for the engagement announcement party on New Year's Eve (held against Linda's wishes as she had asked to be allowed to organize a small, cozy party in the playroom, the only room in the house that actually looks lived in and where a few of the most important scenes are set), they seem to be very unsure about the future of this relationship. They really just want the best for their friend.

This movie starts out so light and happy and optimistic for the young couple. Coming home from a holiday, freshly in love, nothing can go wrong.
Then they start to find out about each other's plans for the future, plans that don't match one bit.
Linda, on the other hand, is torn between the love for her sister and the wish to escape that sort of life. It made me wonder a little how she and Julia seemed to be getting along so well in the first place despite being so different.

My heart breaks a bit for Ned. He's already too far gone and doesn't have the courage to even try and escape even when offered a hand. I can just see him sitting at that desk in the bank, drinking his life away bit by bit.

Despite the developments, however, Johnny has a lightness through most of the movie and sometimes seems childlike which is pretty amazing given he has done nothing but work for so many years already.
I think it's what attracts Linda - I'm sure by now you have guessed the ending - who is trying to conjure up her own happier childhood in the playroom her mother insisted on having in the house (it makes you wonder what her mother was like and if her death made the family fall apart like that). Does she fall in love with Johnny as a person or with the idea of Johnny? I'm desperate for happy endings, at least in movies, and hope it's the first one. They sail off into the sunset together and live happily ever after. Not sure if they will ever be able to come back to see the family (poor Ned) because something tells me Daddy Seton and Julia are not too happy about this, but at least they have their friends by their side.

Did I sound as if I don't like the movie? Nothing could be more wrong. I love it and rewatch it regularly. Maybe it's Cary Grant's optimism and his tumbling (which he did himself, after all he started out touring with a troupe of acrobatic dancers), maybe it's that even the sad parts are not just sad and that there's hope, maybe it's that I didn't find any of the main characters really annoying, not even Julia and her father, or that I loved the Potters.
Maybe I shouldn't even try to find out and just keep loving it.

The movie was based on a Broadway play, by the way, and it is a remake of a movie from 1930 (which I just saw is on YouTube, so take a guess what I'll be watching next!).