More Vintage Enyclopedia Pages

I've been busy taking and editing lots more photos, so I now have some more of those lovely 1950s enyclopedia pages to sell - hurrah!

There's such an interesting mix of topics in these pages, it's been fascinating to see which ones have been snapped up so far. Apart from the large fold-out page, all the pages are approx 17.2 x 24.8cm. You can see more photos, and all the currently available items I'm selling, over on my Instagram sale page or in my Facebook sale group.

"Some of the important breeds of poultry", illustrated by E.C. Mansell. £4 + postage.

A large, fold-out colour plate featuring lots of beautifully illustrated birds. "Migration of British Birds", illustrated by E.C. Mansell. Approx 24.8 x 32.6 cm. £6 + postage.

3 wildlife-themed colour plates from a 1950s encyclopedia. "The queer frilled lizard is ruffled", "Tawny owl, night-watchman of the woods, and "Harvest mice at home in a wheatfield". £1 each plus postage.

Beautiful illustrations of classic stories! Peter Pan, The Arabian Nights, The Blue Bird, Rip Van Winkle, Robin Hood, & The Odyssey. These aren't colour plates, but thinner standard pages from a 1950s encyclopedia. Still wonderful for framing! £2 each + postage.

"Wendy in the Boy's Home in Neverland", illustrated by Gordon Davey. "Aladdin finds the wonderful lamp", illustrated by Eric Hall. And "Moonlight cavern in the palace of night", illustrated by Hazel Frazee. Rip Van Winkle and "Odysseus lured by the sirens' songs", both illustrated by Eric Hall. "Straight flew the arrow to the very centre" illustrated by Hilda Hanway.

 
3 travel-themed colour plates from a 1950s encyclopedia. £1 each + postage. "World famous but sinister landmark of Venice", "Magnificent cataracts of the Victoria Falls", and "Mirrored splendour of the Taj Mahal".

"Queer cactuses and their lovely flowers", illustrated by E.C. Mansell. £3 + postage.

"Some British wild flowers" illustrated by E.C. Mansell. £4 + postage.

"Some decorative examples of Scots tartans", illustrated by E.C. Mansell. £3 + postage.

"Priceless treasures of the Crown Jewels". £3 + postage.

The song "Sur le Pont d'Avignon", illustrated by Yunae Bateman. Please note there are some slight marks on this page, but it's still a lovely thing! £2 + postage.

"Male pheasant's splendid plumage", illustrated by E.C. Mansell. £3 + postage.

"Badges to be earned by Boy Scouts" (on the back: "Badges of merit for senior Scouts"). Please note that both sides are slightly marked. £2 + postage.

 
3 more wildlife-themed colour plates, £1 each + postage. "One of the world's largest yawns", "Glorious display of the peacock's plumage" and "Mandarin drake and his dun-coloured mate".

"Characteristics of many familiar breeds of dog", illustrated by E.C. Mansell. On the back: "Dogs of the farm, field, and home". Both sides are slightly marked. £2 + postage.

 

3 more lovely colour plates: Joan of Arc, Bees, & The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. £2 each. "The peasant girl who saved France", painted by Dudley Tennant. "Worker bees seeking nectar and pollen", illustrated by F. G. Mories. And "Hanging gardens - a marvel of ancient Babylon", illustrated by Marjory Whittington.

Then the last one for now: "Some of the familiar edible and deadly fungi", painted by Marshall Smith. £3 + postage.

Get in touch if you're interested in making a purchase or would like a quote for international postage.  If you're in the UK, 2nd class postage for one of these pages will be £1.40. I'm happy to ship internationally at the moment if you're prepared to wait for your parcel (there may be long delays due to COVID-19 disruption).

Gorgeous Vintage Encyclopedia Pages + Other Loveliness

Two posts in one day! Woohoo!

As well as having some fab new paper packs for sale, I'm also selling some wonderful colour plates from a 1950s encyclopedia and a whole bunch of other lovely things.

 

The encylopedia pages are so delightful and are perfect for framing. I actually have some pages from the same book framed and ready to go up on the walls of my flat... when I finally get round to working out where to hang them, that is! I am so bad at those kinds of decisions.

Get in touch if you're interested in making a purchase or would like a quote for postage. I'm charging the exact postage costs! As I said in my previous post, I'm happy to ship internationally at the moment if you're prepared to wait for your parcel as there may be long delays due to COVID-19 disruption.

First up, those lovely encylopedia pages. All the pages are approx 17.2 x 24.8 cm. Some have sold already but at the time of posting this lot are still available...

"Chrysanthemums of many kinds", illustrated by E.C. Mansell.

Jaguars this time! "Stealthy prowlers of the Amazon forests", painted by Herman Rountree. N.B. this image is darker in real life. It has a lovely moody richness to it! £3 + postage.

I just adore these nature illustrations, and jellyfish are so cool, aren't they? "Jelly-fish: floating invertebrates of the ocean", illustrated by E.C. Mansell. £4 + postage. 

 
Next up: APPLES. This would look so nice framed in a kitchen! "Choice apples for dessert, cooking, or cider". £4 + postage.

I love this one so much: loads of beautiful birds eggs, beautifully illustrated. Just wonderful. "Eggs of thirty-six British birds", painted by Percy J. Billinghurst. N.B. there are some slight marks at the bottom of this page. £3 + postage.

Then here's the last of the bookplates for now... (I've got a few more but need to find the time to take photos of them!) "Delicate forms and colours of the rose", illustrated by E.C. Mansell. On the back: "Climbing, rambling, and cluster roses". £4 + postage.

As well as the book pages, I'm also selling some other nice bits and bobs.

To start us off there's a fab book full of flowers: Floral Designs and Motifs for Artists, Needleworkers and Craftspeople (1984). 136 copyright-free floral motifs in one book! These are all really lovely and could be used for so many different projects. Approx 21 x 28 cm, 80 pages, 260 grams. £5 + postage.

 

 

 

 
Next I've got a really lovely jigsaw puzzle for anyone (like me) who's a big fan of birds! I really enjoyed doing this puzzle, and I love a round puzzle - always an interesting challenge. Vintage birds jigsaw puzzle (1980s). 300 pieces, ONE PIECE MISSING, some damage / old sticky tape / writing on the box. The finished puzzle is approx 41cm in diameter. 320 grams. £2.50 + postage.

 

 

 
This book is so delightful! A great slab of a book to dip into when you fancy it, or to work through slowly soaking it all up bit by fascinating bit. Funny, sad, charming, moving, there's a great mix of stuff in here. Letters of Note: correspondence deserving of a wider audience. A compilation of 125 letters, telegrams, memos and other bits of interesting correspondence! Paperback edition (2016), in nice condition. 368 pages. Approx 1 kilo. 18 x 23 cm. £3 + postage.

 

 

I bought this puzzle because my boyfriend loves lifeboats... but it turns out he's not interested in doing jigsaw puzzles, so I had to do this myself! RNLI jigsaw puzzle, featuring an Arun Class lifeboat at Weymouth in Dorset. 500 pieces, ONE PIECE MISSING (see photos). Some damage ,/ old sticky tape / writing on the box. The finished puzzle is 51 x 35 cm. £2.50 plus postage. 360 grams.

 

 

 
Last but by no means least: a gorgeous big bits of vintage Sanderson fabric, salvaged from some handmade curtains. Some fading at the edges but otherwise in great condition. I think it's 100% cotton. There is loads of gorgeous quality floral fabric here, and Sanderson fabrics are very pricey when bought new!

I've got two sections of this to sell. A: 2 pieces measuring approx 190cm high and 114cm wide, stitched together to make one width (over 228cm) 1050 grams. £30 + postage. B: 2 pieces measuring approx 175cm high and 108 cm wide stitched together to make one width (over 216 cm). 950 grams. £26 + postage.

(Please note I've not washed this but am happy to do so before sending it, let me know xx)

 

 

You can see everything that's currently available over at my Instagram sale account or in my Facebook sale group, and send me a message via my contact form if you'd like to make a purchase. Remember I can post a shoebox sized parcel weighing up to two kilos for just £3.10 in the UK!

My Flat in Progress, September 2018: Putting up Pictures

After hanging the first few pictures in my flat this summer (in the hallway), we finally got around to hanging a few more this autumn.

First up: adding a bit of gentle colour to my very minimal spare bedroom.

I am truly terrible at interiors blogging, because not only have I not taken any more photos of these pictures in situ (so you can better see how they look in the room as a whole) I've also not taken any close-up pics so you can actually, you know, see what the pictures themselves look like. Tsk tsk.

Here's an earlier photo of this wall looking very empty and boring. (If you're curious, you can see more pics of my spare room here).

The group over the radiator are six prints by Geninne D. Zlatkis from her collage birds series, which I bought way back in 2008 but still really like. Everyone who visits my flat seems to love them, too - I've actually had a few people tell my off for hanging them in my spare room! (Here are some old snaps of them in the kitchen/diner in my old flat in 2009, aren't they darling?).

After years of only having art up in cheap clip frames and then several more years of having all my pictures packed up in boxes while I was living with my parents, it feels BEYOND AMAZING getting things up on the wall in actual proper picture frames.

I keep changing my mind about what I'm going to hang where, though! The other picture in the spare room - a print of this wonderful illustration by Lauren Nassef (of pottery collector Edward Sylvester Morse) - I was convinced had to be hung in my living room, because I love it so much that I wanted to be able to look at it a lot instead of hiding it away in the spare room (especially as this was going to be the first time I'd ever actually had space to hang it up on a wall somewhere, after almost ten years of owning it). But once we'd hung up the birds, my dad suggested the pottery collector print would look good in the remaining space and it looked perfect... so up it went.

We made the mistake of hanging it centred in the gap between the end of the radiator and the wardrobe instead of centred between the bird pictures and the wardrobe, but it still looks okay enough that I'm happy to leave it as it is - especially as the wardrobe probably isn't going to be a permanent feature in this room, so I may have to re-hang this picture in the future anyway once I get the "final" bit of furniture for this space. Despite this niggle, I'm really happy with how these seven pictures look in the spare room and I've loved looking at them during the past few months while the spare room has been my bedroom!

In September we also put up the first few pictures in the lounge (we'd hung up my office noticeboard in the summer which has a lot of postcards etc pinned on it, but no actual framed art). On the left hand side of the chimney breast, we hung a couple of posters by Sharilyn Wright of lovelydesign: Beautiful Conifers of Canada and Beautiful Leaves of Canada.
 

These posters are another purchase from almost ten years ago (I bought a lot of art in 2008/9!) which have never been up on the wall before so, again, I am thrilled to finally have them on display. I continue to be a terrible interiors blogger with these rubbish photos, but you can get a better look at everything on those shelves here if you're curious. (I've had to shuffle some things around in the "office" end of my living room to find a new home for the little wooden drawers which previously sat on these shelves, because keeping them here would have meant the prints hanging above them would have been ridiculously high up the wall. Like my decisions about where to hang pictures, working out where all my stuff is gonna live in this flat is a slowly evolving process!)

I still need to properly mount the posters as I only just got round to getting custom mounts to perfectly fit them, but it's still fantastic having them up on the wall even if they are hanging a little wonkily right now.

On the other side of the chimney breast are a set of four Royal Mail stamp posters, from the village Post Office my grandparents used to run.

For a closer look at these posters (& to see them in their old homes in my old flat many years ago) check out this post.

Like the bird prints (and all the other art I've owned for a long time), these posters always looked great but look soooo much nicer now I've got them in some Actual Real Proper Non-Clip Frames. I love the design of these four stamp posters, and they have a lot of sentimental meaning for me as they (obviously) remind me of my grandparents but also of my childhood love of stamp collecting (I still love a nice stamp). It's wonderful having them up on the wall together, in pride of place.

I'll take some better pictures of them all in situ sometime soon, I promise! In the meantime, here's the whole room as it looked back in September (complete with stylish furniture island full of stuff displaced by the work going on in the main bedroom).

We didn't do any other DIY in September, but I did get very excited about MIRRORS.

I spent ages trying to work out what picture I could hang in the empty space at the gloomiest end of my hallway, but everything looked truly terrible (you know, because of the gloom). Everyone always goes on about how great mirrors are for adding light to a dark space, so - even though I'm not really a fan of having mirrors as decorative items in my home - I decided to have a look for cheap mirrors online, found a highly bargainous round one that looked like it might work, cut out a paper template the right size to test it out and it looked kinda awesome, sooo...

... now I have a mirror in my hallway. Do I have a photo to show you of said mirror in my hallway? Of course not. (It does look great, though! All those "put a mirror in a dark corner" articles in interiors magazines were right all along!).

Full of mirror enthusiasm, I then ordered a much fancier round mirror to hang on the chimney breast in my living room. It was the perfect size for the space and I'd oohed over it a lot when I'd seen it on Instagram but sadly, in real life, the colour was too coppery / rose gold for my taste so it went back in the box and back to the shop.

Such a shame, but one successful mirror purchase and finally getting more art up on the walls still feels like good decorating progress!

I'll share some more updates (and hopefully some better pictures) sometime soon. In the meantime, click here to catch up with my home renovation progress so far.