Chance finds of fifties children’s books

Researching my family history, I came across a cartoon in the Syracuse [NY] Post-Standard that seemed more stylish and whimsical than the run of syndicated strips: ‘Geraldine’. This turns out to be by the illustrator Elisabeth Brozowska, and here, thanks to Google and Flickr, is an example of her work.



This led me on to other Flickr sets with post-war illustrations, and I found first these orchestral illustrations by Jan Balet (1951)


and this dictionary by Richard Scarry dated 1949.

Talwin Morris and Reading

An exhibition of binding designs by Talwin Morris (1865–1911), associated with Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style, is now on in Reading University Library Special Collections. Morris’s particular connection with Reading is the period he spend as a young man in the Reading architectural office of his uncle, Joseph Morris. It was after this that he moved to Glasgow to work for the publisher Blackie & Co. in 1893, producing designs influenced by Japanese interior design, Art Nouveau, and the Arts & Crafts movement.

Nothing so dated …

Recycling an old mobile phone, I came across this guide to texting (still called ‘text messaging’) from a BT Cellnet guide dated November 2000.


Some of the abbreviations seem to have stayed the course, but several now mean nothing to my 22-year-old son David, a prodigious user of Skype, AIM, etc., as well as SMS. On the other hand, a Google search seems to turn up most of them. Did BT Cellnet attempt to research usage in 2000? Is predictive text removing the need for such telegraphese?