Talk about books!

I got this one today. Wow!

Great Book Alert

Maria Popova @ Brain Pickings is going to be very dangerous to me. She links to some amazing stuff, including clueing me into this beautiful book. It’s got all my favorites: great illustrations, beautiful colors, smart, interesting info in an easily digestible form. I wouldn’t have known it was so great from the cover, but if you get a chance, peak inside and be overwhelmed with it’s marvelousness!

SUPER SALE 20% OFF Everything in Store

Super Sonic Sale starts today thru – when I decide to end it.

20% off everything in store, which would make everything $20 instead of $25

Go To: Gotcha Cha Cha on Etsy http://www.etsy.com/shop/GotchaChaCha?ref=pr_shop_more

Tell Your Friends!

Love My New (OLD) Book

The Golden Book Encyclopedia * Book 6 * Erosion to Geysers, 1959

Why of why, when I google this book, are the value of this book go from a high of $68.84 to a low of $4.92?? My book doesn’t have its spine anymore, so I feel OK about cutting it up. But I certainly wouldn’t want to cut up a $68 book. Speaking of that, I saw an incredible book at Goodwill yesterday: Rimskittle, 1926. They were asking $25 for it, crazy expensive for Goodwill, but on googling it, I saw it could go for quite a bit higher. The cover was not in good shape, and I am tired of putting money into junky things, so I am not going to buy it. But the pictures are excellent! I would love to frame them! The colors are brillant and the illustrations are as sweet as can be.

Vintage Book Illustrations Framed NEW IN SHOP

“Checking for Injuries”

A great new picture up at Gotcha Cha Cha.

From the book “Technique of Bandaging and Splinting”, 1945. This is from a bizarre book I found, with pictures of 1940’s style people in bandages. The illustrations are great. They are done by Guy Brown Wiser who I was able to Google successfully. At this blog you can learn all about him. I also found this from Ask Art.com:

Born in Marion, IN on Feb. 10, 1895. Wiser graduated from Cornell University in 1917. He then served in WWI as an Air Force pilot before returning to South Bend, IN where he practiced architecture. During 1924-26 he studied art in Paris with Despujols and with Charles Hawthorne at Cape Cod. He taught for nine years at Ohio State University before moving to Los Angeles in 1934 and then taught at Scripps College for two years. During the years 1925-57 he illustrated about 80 books for various book companies. He died in Fallbrook, CA on March 30, 1983. Exh: County Fair (LA), 1935; Painters & Sculptors of LA, 1935; Pasadena High School, 1936; Academy of Western Painters (LA), 1936.

Finally, Something New

I framed this yesterday. It is from the vintage “Bandages” book I found. There are a lot of funky pictures in that book, but the challenge is to find a picture that stands on it’s own as interesting. I like how this came out. I like the red mount board, and the gold frame.

I have not taken proper pictures to put up for sale on etsy, but hope to early next week. I forgot to photograph it without the glass, so now I have to cope with that impediment.

BUY IT SOON!

Coming soon:

This pic is up for sale on etsy, but recently I created this double mat board. I have to reframe it, rephoto it, and then get it up for sale.

Can you see from this picture what great colors are in this alphabet card? I really want to frame this soon.

New Items Up for Sale: pair of J. L. Prevost Botanical Prints

These are so pretty. A pair of prints by the botanical artist J. L. Prevost, 1790-1850. These were of course not made then, but I cannot find out exactly when, but I am going to look for it. You do see these prints every now and then, they are not rare. But here you a have a set, they are framed alike, in the same condition. They have the shabby chic quality, but I also think they can go a lot of different ways, like for people with an interest in 19th century aesthetics.

I stole the following information from the website George Glazer Gallery:

“Jean-Louis Prévost was a painter of landscapes and flowers; and frequently worked in watercolor.  Born in Nointel, France, he was a student of Bachelier and a member of a circle of painters associated with the great botanical artist Gerrit van Spaendonck.  He was a member of the Academy of Saint-Luc, exhibiting paintings of flowers and fruits there from 1791 to 1810, and he also exhibited at the Academie Royale.  His works are in the collection of a number of French museums.  His best known work is the Collection des Fleurs et des Fruits.  A series of Cahiers de Fleurs dessineés d’aprés Nature after Prévost and engraved by A. Legrand was issued in the first quarter of the 19th Century.  Prints based on paintings by Prévost were separately issued as well, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, some bound in composite sets of prints by various makers.

An original Prévost botanical watercolor, and three Prévost botanical prints are in the collection of the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and are illustrated and described in a book of the collection.  According to authors Brindle and White, Prévost’s still life images (specifically flowers and fruit in baskets in the Hunt collection) “reflect a characteristically French trend away from Baroque extravagance and toward casual informality.”

Collage

Now for something fun. Here is a collage of the pictures I currently have for sale on Etsy. You know, I am trying to sell these, sure, but I also just really love these pictures.  I started looking at children’s vintage books after the birth of my first daughter. There truly is an innocence that is not in contemporary books. I love so much illustration, and I love what is being made now a days, but this earlier stuff, before computers, before too-adult pop culture, hell, before MTV, speaks to a time when little girls could wear smocks and dresses (and not be skinny may I add) and the animals were funny, not snarky. On my treasure hunting I also come upon old science journals and textbooks, and those illustrations are clean and crisp and earnest. I use them with irony now, kind of like the pleasure of watching “Mad Men”.

And I think, that if I don’t highlight them, frame them and put them on my wall, they are lost to everyone. So this is my attempt by drawing attention to something, that in my mind, is very valuable and enriching. Maybe you do too!

“The Book of Popular Science”, 1977 and a picture of ChaCha

Hey there, I did manage to put something up on Etsy today. I like it, it is a picture I found in “The Book of Popular Science”, 1977. It compares the brain size of a crew cut guy, a gorilla, a dog and a fish. It is black and white and grey. I put it in a brown wood frame, which I was on the fence about, but I ultimately decided the brown frame color gave the juxtaposition with the black mat board and grey and black graphic a manly feel -? Kinda modern? I could be deluding myself. Take a look yourself, and if you feel like expressing your opinion, please do.