Vintage Christie Covers

 

Three covers sourced from my rather large collection of Agatha Christie covers with artwork supplied by Tom Adams.

I think these three have a bit of a 50's/60's feel and seem "of a type", with light pastel backgrounds showing no horizon line and supporting photo-realistic images in the foreground.

Hans Holbein the Younger

Portrait of a Member of the Wedigh Family 1533

Portrait of Anne of Cleves c.1539

Portrait of the Merchant Georg Gisze 1532

I have always been a great fan of the 16th century portrait artist, Hans Holbein the younger (c.1497-1543).

I love the richness of his palette, his meticulous detail and his employment of script, dress and the placement of personal objects within his works to hint at the personality and story of the sitter. 

I also love the relaxed but intense looks of his subjects which infer there is a lot going on behind the calm outer shell.  I wouldn't mind guessing that Holbein was very good at understanding character.

Find more here:  http://www.hans-holbein.org/

Little Black Book

Many hours spent carving away at this little number on neuropsychological assessment.  Not sure the outcome is deserving of the hours spent, but many things were learned along the way.

More Vintage Murder Mysteries

Some more of those fabulous vintage 50's book covers.

Vintage Detective Novels

Found these little gems whilst wandering around a local community book sale.
Vintage detective hard back novels from the 50's with great illustrated dust jackets and only 50c each.
Just the thing to join all my Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh books.

Urgent Science

Played around with the microscope book a little more and am happier with it's appearance.  Nails and thread and a little red "Urgent" stamp to accompany the mini microscope.  Nothing like a little red to get things happening.

Book Nest

Have been thinking about this concept for a while now - of having a little book in a nest.  Intimating the fragility of the future of books as such and hinting of the tenuousness of it's existence.
Fell upon a tiny little dictionary in a second hand book shop and proceeded to make a little nest for it to sit upon.  Placed the nest in this glass dome stand to make it look more like a Victorian museum piece.
Really hard to photograph with the glass unfortunately

Rolled Red Cover - Work in Progress

 

Busy off doing other things (like installing exhibitions) and consequently have had little time to dedicate to book sculpting over the past week or so.  Why do the enjoyable things always get put on the shelf? (bit of a book pun there me thinks!)

Microscopic Musings - Work in Progress

 

Continuing with my mini microscope. A bit of work to do yet. 

Drawbridge - Folded Book

 

I wanted to stand the cover up away from the folded pages of this book to show the pattern the folding had created.  The little struts reminded me of the mechanism on a castle drawbridge.

The pages of the book were very brittle and dry and a little hard to work with, hopefully the pages are sound enough to remain in place for a while and not fall apart.  Hence some pages aren't as exact as I would have liked, but there was no room for adjustment with this one I'm afraid.

Was thinking as I was folding of my teachers and parents telling me not to dog ear pages as the paper would become damaged and fall off and ruin the book.  Well, this is what I'd call an extreme case of dog eared pages!