Looking Back At Old Stuff In A New Year

Just before our over-stuffed break, we decided to get the new carpet fitted in our sitting room.
Shifting stuff around was a good thing as it enabled us to see the space afresh.
We have decided to move the bookcase into the dining room, but will need to take off about two centimetres of the last ceramic mantelpiece tile in order to fit it where we want it!

Anyway the interesting bit in all this is that when moving the books I realised that I bought or acquired or simply hung on to quite a few of them for their covers alone (don't you just love the bookness of books?) and have no intention of reading them!
So this morning I quickly took a few snaps of some of them with my phone - not great photos I'm afraid -  but here they are:

The top one was my Dad's when he was a boy - 1937/8/9 I should think, whereas the second book was my Mum's from when she was little - a few years later.. 

They both have black and white line-drawn illustrations and BOTH also have some of them carefully coloured-in with pencil crayons by my parents little child hands! Sweet! 

These four are hardback books and I love how dated they are! - The dark colouring and typography on these last two is great

Here's a funny mish-mash grouping with effective use of colour, scale and humour linking the otherwise diverse titles / themes

I just like these two together - Simon Garfield is such a good read - there's one I HAVE managed to get past the cover of - and should re-visit with my students embarking on their Typography Project next week...

This is the catalogue from a lovely show at Kettles Yard Some years ago now - my MA work was concerned with dwelling / representing domestic / intimate space, so this was very relevant then

Similar but different - I love the intimacy of small scale things - celebrating the insignificant! This book is full of charming photographs that cherish the peculiarity of the model village.

Lastly - for now - there's a funny bit of me - the bit that is my dad's daughter - that loves a good old classic car, caravan, motor-home, tractor, train - or any other vehicle! Weird or what? This book is full of fab-ly cheesy illustrations of Austin Maxis and such like

There is a ton of books under the bed too - so as we dig them out, I'll snap them and post them here for posterity