Jazz Books

Helping to clear my boyfriend's late-Grandad's house last weekend we came across a whole stack of vintage niceness. He loved jazz and also had French family so these things combine in a whole collection of fantastic book covers, vintage ephemera and gorgeous postcard books.

Unfortunately my camera battery gave up fairly quickly but next we journey up to Birmingham I will adding a whole stack of lovely vintage postcard-book covers like those below to the Flickr set.

High Society

There's some lovely print to see, from fascinating little bottles of potions to somewhat modernist, positively Burrill-esque simplicity in the new High Society exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, if this Guardian gallery is anything to go by. It opens today and is on til the end of February.

Natsko Seki

Public Bath, 250 x 250mm, 2008

I went to see the Pick Me Up show at Somerset House yesterday and was really overwhelmed by the amount of great work on show. One artist that really did stand out to me that I'd never seen before was Natsko Seki. Her work is amazingly detailed (which is difficult to get across here) and really fascinating. It's joyful and happy but also quite subtle, and the range of techniques she uses in the pieces she showed seemed to blend together seamlessly, and gave an energetic feeling of depth. Really beautiful stuff. I wish I could of afforded one of her larger pieces, but I did manage to pick up an (unlimited edition I think) print of the gorgeous 'Kite' from the shop for a meagre £20.

It was amazing to see Rob Ryan in action, carefully and determinedly drawing away with an automatic pencil, while one of his glamorous assistants sat cutting away with a scalpel. The room was packed and actually kind of claustrophobic. I would of loved to talk to him, but he was so engrossed I didn't want to disturb him. Also, what am I going to say?! "Hi I'm a huge fan. it's really great for me to be able to meet you. And I'm definitely more important than the other 100 megafans also in here. I can't afford to buy any of your work though." YAWN.

ATMOSPHERE

ATMOSPHERE, originally uploaded by wearebrainstorm.

Atmosphere
18" x 24"
5 color silkscreen print
$30

www.wearebrainstorm.com

Cabin + Cub

Spotted this on the Etsy front page today and loved it straight away! There's something about the slightly angled cut-out and rich swirls that contrast really nicely. A giclee print of an original collage, you can snap up Constant Bird Talk for only $15, from a limited edition of 100 prints.

See more sweet things at the Cabin + Cub Etsy shop and read more about Valerie, her work and her inspirations at the Cabin + Cub blog.

Drypoints, from Minu

My Jumper, originally uploaded by sissT.

This new series of drypoint prints from Minu are just lovely. Great characters, and beautiful printing. See more on her Flickr.

enormouschampion

Not a hugely stocked Etsy shop but some interesting bits and bobs, enormouschampion are a duo with some lovely printy stuff.

Topshop Totes

Topshop.com are giving away one of these cute tote bags with every online order at the moment. Rather tempting...

Rob Ryan. Yes, again.

Bristol's Soma Gallery brought some lovely lovely new prints to my attention. (How is this guy not writing songs?)

Kuniyoshi

I went to see the Kuniyoshi exhibition at The Royal Academy last week and thoroughly recommend it. One of the most influential and prolific creators of Ukiyo-e, Kuniyoshi was not only a highly skilled craftsman but also an innovator, developing the use of tryptych. His work covered so many areas, from his famous Warrior series, to political satire (not easy to get away with at the time), narrative, landscape, portraits of actors and popular stage productions, and even his own line in pretty surrealistic shunga. If you can then go when there's a guide to take you round, we tagged onto the group a few times and the guide was really interesting. I hadn't realised that prints of this kind were very mass-market, costing not much more than a couple of bowls of noodles apparently, and were also copied by rival print-houses - there's even a counterfeit version of one of the prints on show for comparison.

Now I'm pretty clueless when it comes to manga and other comic books, but just looking at Kuniyoshi's warrior prints you can clearly see a forerunner to the modern graphic story-telling of Japan, so much so that some of the compositions are deceptively modern, only the slight fade of the ink and wear of the paper give away their age.

There's a (much better written) in depth review of the exhibition here, and more info here.

Polaroid Pogo Printer

My new toy. Nice prints, not fantastic quality but then that's never what Polaroid things are for really. You can peel the back off them and they're sticky so I think they'll be good for sketchbooks and things too. The prints are 3x5" to give you an idea of scale.

The printer would be so much better if it came with some kind of very short cable, or even better, some card readers built in. As neither of my cameras have bluetooth I have to rely on this cable, which kind of ruins the gadget-prettiness.

Mibo Downloadable Calendar

A beautifully illustrated calendar is available to download for all subscribers to Mibo's mailing list right now. Check out the rest of their website for some lovely prints and gift ideas all featuring the distinctive Mibo illustrations.

Good Shape Design

Some nice posters available at Good Shape Design, the work of Wayne Pate. At $30 a pop for silkscreen prints I think they're pretty good value, even though they don't appear to be limited edition.

Via Design*Sponge.

Paul Catherall

I saw some of Paul Catherall's work, and an interesting short film about his linocut process, at the London Transport Museum this weekend. He has a really distinctive style and uses colours in an unusually poetic way that grabbed my attention - I remember seeing these out and around on the tube.
This particular series, Four Seasons, is available to buy at the Transport Museum Shop.