Dear Blog readers, I am so pleased to say that one of you has been in touch with me and very kindly sent a set of scans from her beautifully preserved collection. Ruth has kept some unbelievably rare items – I hope I will be able to share them with you after I have lavished care and attention on their digital restoration.
What a nice way to start the October posts!
Here is the cover from the 1969 Puffin Readers Diary – Thank you Ruth!
From the collection of Ruth – Founder Member 1487
Dear Blog reader, I must apologise for the lack of posting for the last week – it really has been a bit busy. What I can promise you is a Halloween special with some of my favourite Autumn covers. In the mean time, please enjoy a lovely throwaway decoration that festooned the walls and ceilings of the Commonwealth Institute at the Puffin Exhibition.
At the end of the show I saw them being pulled off the walls and stuffed into rubbish bins. This horrified me, even at a tender age, and I asked Kaye Webb if I could take one home. The pink one lived blu-tacked to my wall until it found its way to the safety of my portfolio – as far as I know it’s the only one left.
Well, I finally did it! I mentioned in my earlier blog entry that I would attempt to tun my Moleskine sketchbook into a Thinkbook – It worked! This is my old Thinkbook from 1979 with the new improved model of 2008. Now my kids are bugging me for one as well! Talk about making a rod for my own back!
Those of you keeping up with events will recognise this image – the new Puffin Post has snipped Jills artwork out of this and updated the background. I must admit I have a soft spot for decoupage, and 1968 was a very good year for it on the covers of Puffin Post.
Those of you keeping up with events will recognise this image – the new Puffin Post has snipped Jills artwork out of this and updated the background. I must admit I have a soft spot for decoupage, and 1968 was a very good year for it on the covers of Puffin Post.
For those who might be interested…
The Today Program on BBC Radio 4 had a small item at the end of the show about the launch of the new Puffin Post. Listen again will be available till Friday 26 September 2008. The Gallery of covers will probably survive for much longer.
Today programme link
Another little treat for you. This is the original Puffin Club bookplate design. You would get a sheet of eight of these on pre-gummed paper. I think this has a lovely old school charm about it. It certainly felt like your books were safer when you lent them to friends (didn’t stop them from getting scuffed to hell though – you know who you are!!!!).
The design was created by the illustrator Roland Ferns, who had worked with Kaye Webb during her time at Lilliput. Some of his work was surreal and heading into more adult imagery, but this one image is probably his most enduring.
The new Puffin Post club has revived this design with a lot of colour and the addition of their puffin mascot – as yet unnamed.
I have to admit I’m a bit of a pedant when it comes to history – it comes from working in Film restoration and in the media. There’s a lot of revisionist thinking out there (re-writing of history).
So what was the ‘Puffin Club’ (not Puffin Post)? Well here’s a great little explanation by Kaye Webb herself, writing in the Puffin Diary of 1979:
The new club is called ‘Puffin Post’ – not the ‘Puffin Club’. The club is now the schools entity. I suppose this makes it easier to differentiate between the two. I can’t help feeling this may confuse a few of us older members, but I have to remind you – ‘It’s not for us! It’s for our kids!’
I have to admit I’m a bit of a pedant when it comes to history – it comes from working in Film restoration and in the media. There’s a lot of revisionist thinking out there (re-writing of history).
So what was the ‘Puffin Club’ (not Puffin Post)? Well here’s a great little explanation by Kaye Webb herself, writing in the Puffin Diary of 1979:
The new club is called ‘Puffin Post’ – not the ‘Puffin Club’. The club is now the schools entity. I suppose this makes it easier to differentiate between the two. I can’t help feeling this may confuse a few of us older members, but I have to remind you – ‘It’s not for us! It’s for our kids!’
Yes indeedy, it’s one of the few autographs I have bothered to get in my life – and it’s a good one! This is one of three autographs I got from Kaye Webb – The other ones are in ‘The Puffin Joke Book’ and ‘I Like this Poem’. You can see this image used again in one of my earlier postings used as the cover of the ‘The most gigantic tiny notebook in the world’ (a new version of which will be included in the new club members pack – not by Jill McDonald though!)