Rare Catholic Statues. Ever since I was a 21 year old wide-eyed visitor of Liverpool's (long gone) Catholic Truth Society shop I've loved plaster statues of Saints designed for home devotion. Sadly, even today's practicing left-footers seem to regard these inexpensive objects as incompatible with their precious property's laminated decor and who, in their right mind, would want to offend their neighbour's secular sensibilities with even the remotest display of belief in the non-material or self-sacrificial?

Happily, some of these once populist, mass-manufactured figurines are currently available for purchase on ebay. Even the ignorant should recognise the first figure as St.Sebastian, here without the details of his arrow-pierced martyrdom. The second is St.Expeditus, from Roman antiquity, and the third is the great St.John Vianney (aka Cure D'Ars), patron Saint of Priests.

Bagnall's Retreat has been on retreat!

For the last 3 days I've been living at Ushaw College a.k.a St.Cuthbert's Roman Catholic Seminary. Directed by Fr.Paul Grogan, the retreat centred around a 25 hour grand silence which was imposed on Friday evening and lifted at 9pm Saturday, when myself and the seven other male retreatants were able to re-join the rest of the community.

The first photo was taken from my room not long after arriving and the other two are from a brisk and nippy morning walk in the snowy grounds before I gathered with Anthony, David, John, Frank, Simon, Benjamin, Martin and Fr.Grogan to recite the Morning Office in St.Joseph's Chapel.

More Kenneth Rowntree Art. Astute and regular readers will have noticed that I am very keen on unearthing any printed items or original art of the pre-1970s work of my late art school Professor Kenneth Rowntree. I challenge you not to like this latest Rowntree (1949) book I have discovered via Ebay. Here are enough dull greys and sober design to last you a pleasurable rain drenched weekend.

Denture Repairs Comic Strip. This little piece of whimsey came about because I'd spotted a hand-painted sign in a Co.Durham semi-detached house window reading "Denture Repairs Here". Behind its net-curtains the sitting room looked dingy and old-fashioned, with a Seance on a Wet Afternoon ambience which certainly appealed to my imagination. I was planning to take a photo of this sign but when I returned to the terraced street the other week the sign had gone. I felt the vanished image needed to be commemorated in a strip.

More exotic packaging art. In response to my earlier post about Turkish confectionery packaging Harley Richardson has kindly captured these Asian graphic delights at a Tooting store and sent them to Bagnall's Retreat. What makes these designs superior to Tesco or Sainsbury's latest offerings? Apart from their visual unfamiliarity I think these boxes have an attractive bias in favour of arbitrary decoration (stars surely straight out of an old Letraset book) rather than boringly informing the anxious buyer what lurks inside the cardboard packaging. No sophisticated re-touched photographs appear here nor calorie or fat-content statistics. The uninitiated consumer must enter a mystery contract and £1.49 seems a very fair price to me for a product which promises to aid "prayer and pleasure".

A John Betjeman postage stamp. I unearthed this piece of Betjeman ephemera because the lovable old coot is once again prominent in my thoughts since reading A.N. Wilson's recent biography. It's a fine account for which I can forgive the author's 1993 heathen-biased life of Jesus. What strikes home is that the British architectural and cultural heritage Betj strove to save is virtually extinct but so is any trace of comparable humour or genuine eccentricity in today's cultural commentators.


Like my earlier blogged sighting of George Melly in a London street I remember vividly spotting John Betjeman ambling near Leeds Town Hall while I was about 19 years old and about to transfer onto a National Express bus to Liverpool. Betjeman's portly figure was unmistakeable, as was his battered charcoal suit and trilby. He seemed to be gazing upwards at the soot-encrusted provincial buildings, memorials of Victorian civic pride.

Turkish Confectionery Art. The necessary arrival of Polish foodstuffs in British shops has seen me optimistically searching for either appealingly dated or enticingly exotic Polish packaging. So far I've been disappointed, most Polish beer cans or orange cordial bottles look as brightly bland and contemporary as any other items of consumer enslavement on Tesco or Asda's shelves. The search for graphic novelty has had to continue elsewhere...

Ulker Cokokrem, now on sale in the UK, is a Turkish liquid chocolate confection packaged in toothpaste style tubes. Perhaps its sugar-saturated contents will be a hit with sweet-toothed children. The acidic green and red packaging is what locked my own adult eye in pleasurable wonderment. Garish candy-stripes and bulging typefaces are seldom used by Western European graphic communicators, but here they are working a treat, like a breath of unsophisticated Bosphorous air. Look how the Turkish designer revels in presenting the product smeared on a crust of bread in total un-natural, lava-like, rippled glory. See how the tube's goofy troglodyte cartoon character could be almost drawn by Ed Roth and how the red plastic cap works as the trog's headgear. Perfect!

I hope I'm feeling well enough by New Year to munch a little bit of Ulker Cokokrem. As they say in downtown Istanbul...mmm, Kremasi!

Sick-Note Bagnall. My sincere apologies to all my friends who I was unable to send Happy Christmas wishes to. I've been struck down with the worst streaming cold since I was a lad in short trousers. The timing couldn't have been worse. Pax Vobiscum to you all and I hope you'll keep reading and commenting in 2008 A.D.

Above photo is of St. Padre Pio revering the Christ Child during a 1960s Christmas at Pietrelcina, Italy.

If you feel compelled to spend your miserable wages on Christmas Tat then these examples of festive kitsch are about one degree preferable to the corporate evils on display in our Capitalist marketplaces. Why? This German Advent calendar doesn't contain any branded chocolate and so you may happily reflect on The Annunciation and the Flight to Bethlehem etc. without teeth decay /contributing to some fat Cadbury executive's Christmas bonus. The St.Nicholas doll above may look cute but he is definitely not modelled on the dominant company-originated image of Santa Claus we all have to put up with. The red-suited and white-bearded brand of Santa comes directly from Coca Cola advertising in the 20th Century. This St.Nick is offering what he owns to the poor and there's not a Nintendo Wii in sight!

Another Edward Bawden mention is long overdue. This lovely Bawden print of The Titfield Thunderbolt is available as a Christmas card from the Royal Academy online shop.

Winter is definitely upon us, but so is the season of Advent, the start of the church year and the holy period of preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Christ.

Adventus is the Latin word for "coming" and is the exact equivalent for the Greek word parousia, the word most commonly used in reference to the Second Coming.

On Sunday you were all permitted to light the first candle on your Blue Peter coat-hanger Advent Crown. I hope you remembered to ask permission from Dad to use his matches...

John Bratby revisited. When I wrote about the slightly-neglected British "Kitchen Sink" artist John Bratby in my September 13th post I didn't expect much of a response and true enough, no blog comments were received.

A little while later though I received an email from musician and artist Harley Richardson with a very interesting and unexpected Bratby connection. His Dad, Ian Richardson, a former BBC employee, had once had his portrait painted by the great palette-knife wielder. I knew Bratby had concentrated on portraiture since the late 60s and his sitters had included British luminaries like John Betjeman, Sir Alec Guinness and Spike Milligan, but never dreamed I would hear first-hand details of what it was like to be painted by the whiskered one. Ian Richardson has kindly written about his encounter especially for Bagnall's Retreat and this is what he remembers:

"When I was on the BBC staff, any mail for 'Ian Richardson' would come to me and that would sometimes include fan letters for my actor namesake, who had made a name for himself, not least in 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy'. Late in 1982, I opened an envelope to find a letter from John Bratby inviting me to pose for an exhibition 'The Individual in the Growing Egalitarian Society'. I was told that the exhibition would also include new portraits of the Queen Mother, Paul McCartney and a number of other prominent folk. Clearly the invitation was not intended for me, so I wrote back to John, saying how flattered I was but the invitation was obviously for the actor and had been forwarded to him. This amused John and he thought it would be fun to paint both Ian Richardsons, so in March 1983 my wife and I went to his house in Hastings and sat for several hours as he did the large portrait using a palette-knife and oils. Throughout the sitting, his wife, Patti, brought me coffee in an outsize cup and saucer...plus a frequent supply of bacon sandwiches. She would take the opportunity to study the progress of the portrait, then would return a few minutes later to hand John her comments scribbled on a scrap of paper.

As John and I parted he gave me a signed copy of his book 'Breakdown'. It was intended for his psychiatrist and already had a hand-written dedication in the fly-leaf, but John had simply added my name and the date and handed it to me. My actor namesake declined to be painted by John and my portrait never appeared in the exhibition. John later offered to sell it to me for £300, but I was so poor at the time that I couldn't afford it. Later, after John had died and I was financially better off I contacted Patti Bratby asking if the portrait was still available, but she couldn't find it anywhere among his collection."

Cardboard Box Art. I've always liked the simple images you find printed onto functional cardboard boxes. At a time when most graphic communication is over-sophisticated and pretentious the sight of a basic pictogram warning a warehouseman to go easy with his Stanley Knife warms the cockles of my heart. I cut the above example off a box found this week and the image seems to be a more eccentric variation of the message "careful with your knife when opening this box". My interpretation is this: Don't insert your beef-slicing cleaver into this packaging or you might split the thread on the bobbins inside, especially when wearing a dickie-bow.

More cardboard art to follow.

A comic strip of moral advice. Mind you, I need to take note of that advice more than most, and I wrote and drew the blinking thing!

Firework Art. Walking to church this morning at 8.30am I couldn't help taking note of the previous night's firework detritus in the streets. Not only were the used label designs disappointingly perfunctory, unimaginative and basic but most people seemed to have celebrated Bonfire Night two nights early!

When I was in short trousers I used to look forward to the morning after Bonfire Night so I could gather up the burnt-out rockets and roman candles which were scattered in the streets. The label designs then were perhaps more exciting than anyone's actual firework displays. Here is a small sampling of beautiful Firework Art from the 50s and 60s. Even the names of these old firework companies conjure up a million associations of Old England: Brocks, Wessex and Pain's. The first Brock's Fireworks poster alone is an anonymous masterpiece in my eyes.

Loyal readers will know that hand-painted signs are one of the regular obsessions of this blog, including rare "ghost signs" painted onto brick. I can't take credit for the above double beauty, though. It's from Sam Brown's excellent brickads site. For more of Sam's fine collected vintage advertising go here.

Professional Transylvanian Signs. There were lots of charming and eccentric examples of these in Brasov town alone. The above selection will hopefully speak volumes as far as visual appeal goes. Wouldn't you rather buy your next pair of bi-focals at Helioptic Optistar rather than Specsavers?

I loved the wristwatch illustration in its half-moon shaped frame but still can't determine what the lovely shop in the first two photos was selling. Is a Bijuterii a jewellers? Perhaps jewellry repair. Hard to say, as this beautiful store of mystery would not let you see its wares. I can't tell you how much I prefer this silent window frame and fascia to today's Sunday shopping experience at my local B&Q and Argos...

Concrete Transylvania.

I suppose we spoilt Western European tourists when visiting former Iron Curtain territories can't help looking out for bleak architectural remainders of the 20th Century Communist era. I knew President Ceausescu enjoyed deliberately erecting ugly utilitarian factories next to historical Romanian sites and had no qualms about bulldozing churches and houses to make way for his immense neo-classical palace in Bucharest.

Here are three examples of appealing Socialist Modernism, all from the town of Brasov.

Hand Painted signs of the amateur variety seemed to abound in Transylvanian back-streets. Most of them were practical warnings for selfish folk not to park their clapped-out Dacia cars in front of wooden garage doors but I particularly liked the "Posta" one with its envelope diagram, artfully slapped onto a doorway encrusted with years of weathered paint.

Back from Transylvania! A fortnight has passed since returning from this adventure (too many mishaps like a cancelled plane and a middle of the night dental hospital visit for it to be called simply a holiday.) Nevertheless, this region of Romania has indelibly carved it's virtually Third World identity on my heart. The mountains were beautiful, the architecture exotic, the people both friendly and religious and the food/drink hearty and very cheap. I was happy to see Transylvanian's earning something from the Dracula merchandise they had for sale near Bran Castle, though since getting home I'm tired of being asked "Let me have a look at your neck..."

Will be posting some pics of great hand painted signs from the region plus some remaining architectural vestiges of Communism. But if you really can't wait, here is a big batch of Transylvanian snaps to gaze at.

The Transylvanian Twist. On Sunday I begin my long awaited holiday to Romania. First the capital of Bucharest and then by train to the Carpathian Mountains. Above is the Transylvanian town of Brasov, my base for exploring these ancient Saxon lands.

Pray for the safety of my mortal soul so that I don't return as one of ....(shudder) the Undead.

Kitchen Sink Art. It's hard to imagine these 1950's canvases as once being thought controversial, offensive or vulgar. They are all paintings (barring the film poster) by my current favourite British artist John Bratby, and yes, it would be no exaggeration to say Bratby was briefly the Damien Hirst of his day, thickly daubing provincial back-yards, washing lines, chip-pans and toilet bowls to the horror of the refined sensibilities of mid- 20th Century Royal Academicians. Disgusted art critic David Sylvester coined the term "Kitchen Sink Painters" to denigrate John Bratby and his associates, who insisted on depicting the drab, grey, mundane, musty and rusty.

John Bratby's notoriety was abruptly cut short by the onset of the swinging 1960s and the heavily publicised Pop Art of David Hockney, Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton and Allen Jones. Their cool paintings and sculptures referenced international Pop Culture, and the glamorous influence of the USA media. 1950's UK Kitchen Sink art was suddenly and cruelly consigned to the critical scrap-heap and consequently meant that a Bratby canvas could still be bought for under £10,000 in 2005.

Much as I enjoy 60s British Pop Art as a visual counterpart to the revolutions of the Fab Four, Psychedelia etc. I now prefer to hanker after the smelly oil-paint, crew-neck jumper and goatee bearded art of the former Kitchen Sink era. This alluring, semi-forgotten bohemian world has a lineage that goes back to the heyday of the Slade School of Art, the dingy realism of Walter Sickert and the dank, gas-lit interiors of the Camden Town Group.

What clinches Bratby's artistic appeal for me is discovering he was still in favour enough to be commissioned to paint the giant canvases for the film The Horses Mouth. In this fine 1958 movie, based on Joyce Cary's classic novel, Alec Guinness plays maverick artist Gully Jimson, a bearded eccentric not unlike John Bratby.

Alec Guinness, Joyce Cary, John Bratby. In UK cultural terms I can't currently think of anything currently more appealing And what could be more in need of re-discovery? I hear the Saatchi brothers recently bought and displayed a brace of choice 1950s Bratby pictures. But how many more will look beyond the glitz of the Sixties to stare into the greasy water of the Fifties kitchen sink?

A Disappearing Put-Down?

I hope none of you fellows have ever been on the receiving end of this withering judgement, the latest in my series of Disappearing Phrases drawings.

A midden, for those who don't know, is a dung-heap commonly used before the advent of modern sanitation. I've never heard this phrase spoken by anyone under the age of 50.