The other day, I locked myself up and rewatched old Silly Symphonies episodes.
The skeleton friends must be my favourites and I love both the 1929 (first Silly Symphonies ever!) as the 1937 version🖤
Just wanted to share a snippet of them with you and hope they make you smile as well.
xez
I love these drawings so much- a pink legged umbrella fish, the vegetable knights, or a soup serving pig…all of them are colourful and creative.
They were made by the children of Emma and Charles Darwin- who in his turn wrote ‘On the Origin of Species...’-the foundation of evolutionary biology and the book that would make him history’s most famous biologist.
After the proofs came back from the publisher, daddy Darwin considered the pages more useful to his kids than to him and so, the back of these important scientific papers doubled as sketching paper.
These little artworks and the emotional value they had to the family, are the sole reason that a few pages of the original manuscript still exist today💕
According to researchers, most of the art was made by 3 of the 10(!)Darwin kids: Francis, George, and Horace. Francis later became a botanist, George an astronomer/mathematician and Horace chose to become an engineer.
All of the children often assisted their father’s research- by collecting butterflies, insects and moths or by making observations on plants in the fields around town.
I love that these drawings show a different Darwin: not just that serious, white bearded, great thinker…but also a family man that inspired his kids, cherished their art and supported their imagination.
Colour images of Darwin’s surviving original scientific manuscripts (including these lovely drawings) can be viewed at the American Museum of Natural History website, in collaboration with the Cambridge University Library.
xez
I’ve always had a soft spot for Humpty Dumpty…There’s just something about the tragedy that nobody could put him back together again in combination with his brilliant look, that fascinated me.
I made a tiny Humpty pendant in silver with shiny red sapphire eyes to honour this fantastic fragile friend.
And have alook below, to see a montage of some of my favourite vintage Dumpty’s of all time.
xez
* Found footage from:
Norman Z. McLeod’s 1933 Alice in Wonderland, a frightening 1983 Kinder Surprise commercial by the late Mike Portelly, Sesame Street, Jim Henson’s Mother Goose from 1990, Fleischer Studios’ 1936 Greedy Humpty Dumpty and a UB Iwerks ComiColor from 1935.
This 14 karat golden ring was inspired by a snailcat, depicted in the 14th Century Maastricht Book of Hours.
I think it was either through @stephenellcock or @damien_kempf that I was first introduced to the magical world of medieval marginalia. These drolleries, or grotesques, were illustrations that decorated the margins of illuminated manuscripts, often of mixed and magnificent beasts.
My favourite creatures must be the snail hybrids that pop up all over the place between the 13th and 14th century.
Scholars don’t know exactly where they originate from and have offered many interpretations; from biblical (Psalm 58.8: ”may they be like a snail that melts away as it moves along..”) to satirical (comparing a snail to a heavily armoured knight), from being a metaphor for resurrection, to a symbol of the Lombards or perhaps a representation of class struggles.
But although they often surrounded heavy religious matter, marginalia rarely illustrated the text and most often have no direct relationship with it at all.
They truly constitute a world of their own.
They celebrate the freedom of the outer edge.
History often calls the medieval period the Dark Age, but these brilliant illustrations prove, that many medieval minds were full of light, humour and crazy curious creativity.
xez
