Through the Looking Glass - Bergdorf Goodman window displays

Every Christmas it's traditional for the 5th Ave stores to compete against each other via their window displays, and the Bergdorf Goodman A Compendium of Curiosities holiday window displays are a spectacle to be seen.

The theme is based on Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass. Of course it's no coincidence that Bergdorf have chosen this theme as the hugely anticipated Tim Burton film Alice in Wonderland is due out early next year.

This years window display was created by Bergdorf’s Senior Director of Visual Presentation, David Hoey, and his team of artists. The windows are spectacular; complete decadence, nods to Carroll's characters and not and inch of empty space. The team at BG have perfectly captured fantasy through their looking glass displays and they submerge you into imaginary worlds of dreams, luxury fashion and products. Curiouser and Curiouser...

My personal favourite is the paper/stationery window.

Bill Turnbull

British fine artist, Ben Turnbull (not to be mistaken for the BBC journalist and presenter of the same name), recently had an exhibition at Eleven gallery in London, I Don't Like Mondays. He also had a feature in Wallpaper magazine and on It's Nice That.

It is his wood carvings that attracted me to see more of his work. I've always had a fondness towards school desks, I even own the 1950s twin lidded school desk with ink wells that I sat at during primary school. In the late 80s, our school decided to get rid of the "old fashioned" furniture and replace it with horrible plastic stuff, and so my parents bought it for me. I love the feeling of being sat at it and freely graffiting!

Anyway, back to Ben...his most recent work is a reflection of America's fascination with gun culture: it's a beautiful juxtaposition of school children innocence (and their boredom doodles) against the sad reality that guns and harmful weapons have infiltrated our societies. They are all aptly named Lesson 1, Lesson 2 etc.

I also like the fact that he has used salvaged school desks, as their pen-marked scribbles and markings make for great backgrounds and canvases. There are seven desk tops in total including weapons such as western styled guns, grenades and futuristic/space-age guns. The weapons are intricately part-carved out of the desk lid and they gently surface out of the woodwork. I don't know what technique he has used to create these works of art, but it's impressive. I even like his signature that is carved on the bottom left of the canvas.

He is definitely out to shock, turning the innocence of boys toys and school life to the dangers and corruption of firearms. He explains why toys are central to his work: ‘Force fed on violence, abused by a controlling superpower and blackmailed through patriotism, the public are ultimately as disposable as the toys they once played with’.

Cliff Roberts

Cliff Roberts illustrations have cropped up on many design blogs of late and feeling left out I thought it was time to feature him here.

Roberts was a cartoonist and animator in the 1950s+, working for companies and clients such as Sesame Street, Playboy, Ford Times Magazine and The New Yorker. Later on in life he also worked as a photographer and had work featured in the 1964's World's Fair and also wrote, animated and directed popular Saturday morning cartoons such as Scooy-Doo, The Smurfs and The Pink Panther.

I really love this style, where everything is broken down to simple, basic forms and colour palettes. Even though the images are flat they are still so charming and American in aesthetic. Cliff was born in 1929, retired in 1993 and sadly died in 1999.

I haven't managed to find much information about Roberts, but I did find this gem from Todays Inspiration blogspot. It shows one of the newspaper comic strips that Roberts created in the 1970s for the Children's Television Workshop, Sesame Street, which was still fairly new then. For the strip, he created two characters called Jasper and Julius, a comedy duo.

Among my research I also discovered that he illustrated these beautiful and rare editioned books in 1955 and 1956: The First Book of Jazz by Langston Hughes and Thomas by Mary Harris.










Thanks to davidgeorgepearson at flickr.com for the The First Book of Jazz images and lemon.wonder at flickr.com for the Thomas images.

House Industries

Last night (Thurs 19th November) the House Industries gang were at the Type Directors Club in NYC to give a talk, Letter As Image. For the past month (since 21st October) they have held an exhibition at TDC called Type as Object, and this lecture marked the ending of the exhibit.

The lecture was led by Ken Barber, their chief letterer and typeface designer. He took us through a humorous journey into the workings and processes of the 16 year old type house as well as showcasing the studio's recent works. House Industries have achieved goals that many type foundries or designers alone could only imagine - they are paid to do what they want and love, rather than being led by the client. They of course have their bread and butter work, however they also have the ability to create their own original letterings, illustrations and designs for themselves. Their maximalist mantra is very much more is more... In their own words "House have shunned humdrum typography and unoriginal, overworked font filters in favor of crankin’ out good ol’ hand-lettering".

Their pop-up shop-cum-exhibition had an interesting mix of objects, prints, patterns, products and sculptures all to demonstrate their love of all things typographical and alphabetical. It was also a perfect excuse for the House designers to create tangible objects to get away from the vector and hand drawn daily work. A lot of their products contained the works of Alexander Girard (who I'll be posting about soon). When he passed away they partnered with máXimo to gain rights to use his work.

It's apparent that the House guys are all fan boys who love retro type, heavy metal posters, custom cars and have somehow managed to find a way to make a living out of it! Quite frankly they are living the dream.

Stephane Halleux

I recently got sent a link to Stephane Halleux's website, and I'm very pleased to have had the pleasure! The Belgium sculptor has developed a fascination with robotics, be it characters; animals; cars; flying objects or chairs. His style has a strong Steampunk feel to it - kind of Lemony Snicket's: A Series of Unfortunate Events mixed with Tim Burton's quirky creativity.







These cyborganic sculptures are created with with mixed medias such as leather, metal, wood pulp and salvaged materials. They look so fragile, especially the thin legged models and would work beautifully in a stop motion animation film. Although I'm not sure if the sculptures are malleable or can be easily turned into animatronics. See his website for more images and close ups of his spectacular mechanical curiosities.

Félix Girard

Canadian self-taught illustrator and painter, Félix Girand, was born into the artist world. Both mother and father are painters and he spent most of his childhood in a family workshop where he discovered different medias and techniques.

His main subject of choice are fantastical characters that he situates in surrealist backgrounds and landscapes. The strangely distorted character paintings all share similar warm hues and palette, which I thought was perfectly fitting to blog about on this wild and wet day.

There is something very fable about his style and when researching him I've read somewhere that he takes inspiration from comic books and illustrators such as Brian Froud but has lately become influenced by Renaissance painters such as Brueghel, Bosch, Dürer and Vermeer.