Gareth Wild and Michelle Thompson are an East Anglian graphic designer and illustrator, who live on the web at 59highstreet.com. They’ve come up with a way to commemorate the beautiful old village signs that are slowly disappearing from our lanes and hedgerows.
There’s such music in those village names. Ickleton. Elsenham. Sewards End.
Now you can own [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Essex'
Village typography
July 9th, 2010 1 Comment
Writing East Anglia
March 5th, 2010 No Comments
If you enjoy this blog, you may well be interested in a Writing East Anglia workshop at Writers’ Centre Norwich, with Jeremy Page, an author steeped in the local landscape. He writes sad, soulful books about loss, which seems to be the only appropriate form for the hardness of the fens. But perhaps other, more [...]
Tags:
Audley End
June 15th, 2009 4 Comments
The house at Audley End is the cut down relic of a much large Jacobean palace, and is surrounded by acres of lavish parkland mostly used these days for picnicing, sunbathing and concerts. Arriving is almost the best part – you stop at the gatehouse and then sweep along the enormous curved drive across the [...]
Tags: audley end · decoration · espalier fruit trees · gardening · greenhouses · historical gardens · historical re-enactment · nineteenth century life · organic garden · organic growing · servants quarters · stately home · victorian
Now with added map
June 2nd, 2009 2 Comments
I just wanted to draw your attention to the fact that from now on I’ll be plotting the geographic location of the things I write about on a google map, which can be found though the ‘navigate using map’ link on the right sidebar. It seems appropriate given the heavily localised nature of the blog, [...]
Tags: cartography · east anglia · google map
A nice cup of tea
May 3rd, 2009 2 Comments
All bank holiday trips should be accompanied by tea, preferably properly made and served without styrofoam. Luckily, there is an organisation called the Tea Council, whose remit is to find and classify those who sell really good cups of tea, and they have recently announced their 2009 Awards of Excellence. As they have only made [...]
Tags: an excuse to use the word tea a lot · tea · teapots · tearooms
life.com
April 12th, 2009 No Comments
Under the that wonderfully evocative URL, Life magazine has put its photo archive online. There are photos of everything both great and ordinary, from the early years of the twentieth century onwards.
It’s a great resource for anyone interested in local history, twentieth century fashion, architecture, design, and just how life was lived. There are also [...]
Tags: 1920s · 1930s · art · culture · design · east anglia · history · life · life magazine · photography · photos · pictures · social history
Foraging in the hedgerows – spring
March 29th, 2009 No Comments
Today I went foraging in the woods with friends for the fresh green tops of stinging nettles which are just coming into growth to make nettle and ginger beer. I can’t yet vouch for the flavour – it takes about 7 days to be ready to drink, so watch this space.
Even if it turns out [...]
Tags:
Typoretum
March 28th, 2009 2 Comments
The other day I fetched up in the lovely market town of Coggeshall in Essex to meet Justin Knopp of Typoretum about doing some bespoke letterpress work.
Walking into the studio is like stepping back eighty years or so, and everywhere your eye settles in the cramped space there is something interesting to look at. Four presses are [...]
Tags: bespoke · coggeshall · custom · garamond · greetings cards · letterpress · printed cards · printing · stationary · type · Typography · typoretum