First Night Design | Summer & Winter Wildlife card #GCU #Sold!

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Copper Pear Candy Tins | Zazzle #Sold! Jelly Belly™

Jelly Belly™ Small Snip Snap Tin

A quick snip, the lid opens, and candy awaits you. Snap the lid back and the freshness is preserved. The Small Snip Snap Tin (0.40 oz) is a great way to share your artwork, text, photos, and candy with anyone! Excellent for baby or bridal showers, company celebrations, and holiday parties.

Source: Copper Pear Candy Tins | Zazzle

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One Gallòglach and Two Kerns – Albrecht Dürer Canvas Print | Zazzle #Sold!

Detail of a 1521 drawing by Albrecht Dürer of Irish warriors.

Source: One Gallòglach and Two Kerns – Albrecht Dürer Canvas Print | Zazzle

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First Night Design | Halloween: The Final Frontier card #GCU #Sold!

This cute illustration of a young witch (surely an innocent apprentice!), with her cat and pumpkin carriage, takes us back to the early 20th century when greeting card illustration was highly inventive and extremely popular. I have given her a new lease of life with a starry night background.

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There Were Never Such Devoted Pumpkins Binder | Zazzle #Sold

I’m delighted to have sold this binder to follow the matching card I sold the other day.

Source: There Were Never Such Devoted Pumpkins Binder | Zazzle

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Devoted Pumpkins Halloween card #Sold!

Devoted Pumpkins Halloween card. Personalize any greeting card for no additional cost! Cards are shipped the Next Business Day.

There were never such devoted pumpkins! Fresh pumpkins to make an exquisite pumpkin pie for your Halloween supper. Also suitable for Thanksgiving.

Source: Devoted Pumpkins Halloween card (866786)

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Flying Turkeys Thanksgiving card #Sold!

Flying Turkeys Thanksgiving card. Personalize any greeting card for no additional cost! Cards are shipped the Next Business Day.

The shadows of flying turkeys trying, perhaps, not to be caught and end up on the Thanksgiving table!

Source: Flying Turkeys Thanksgiving card (868757)

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First Night Design | Ellen Terry as Volumnia Greeting Card #Theatre #Zazzle

Dame Ellen Terry as Volumnia in Coriolanus Card

This signed photograph of Dame Ellen Terry (1847-1928) as Volumnia in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus is a treasured possession, left to me by the actress Rosamund Burne [? – 1975]. Ros was a close friend of my mother, Benedicta Leigh — both had worked together on stage in the Midlands during the late forties and early fifties. They remained friends until Ros died ‘in harness’ in 1975 while playing Queen Mary in a production of Crown Matrimonial by Royce Ryton.

Contained in a weathered, black leather frame, the photograph provides an evocative link to a long-gone generation of actors. Sadly, I have no knowledge of the picture’s provenance, other than that it was mounted and framed by art dealers and frame makers T & R Annan and Sons, established in Glasgow by photographer Thomas Annan in 1855.

It is addressed to “Winnie – In affectionate remembrance of Ellen Terry – 1902” but who was ‘Winnie’? Was she an admiring member of the audience, a fellow actress, a theatrical landlady, perhaps?

The phrase “affectionate remembrance” suggests a reasonably close association. Could it possibly be Miss Winifred Emery (1861-1024) who, wrote Miss Terry in her memoirs (The Story of My Life – Recollections & Reflections), “came to us for The Belle’s Stratagem and played the part that I had played years before at the Haymarket. She was bewitching, and in her white wig in the ball-room, beautiful as well. She knew how to bear herself on the stage instinctively, and could dance a minuet to perfection. The daughter of Sam Emery, a great comedian in a day of comedians, and the granddaughter of the Emery, it was not surprising that she should show aptitude for the stage.”

Photograph of Winifred Emery with her children (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Winifred Emery married Cyril Maude who was famous for his ability in light comedies from the pens of such as Frederick Lonsdale. Though born in 1862, Maude was still working as late as 1947, appearing as the Old Admiral in the film version of Rattigan’s While the Sun Shines, directed by Anthony Asquith.

Could Ros Burne have met or worked with either Winifred or Cyril and been given the picture by ‘Winnie’ herself if, indeed, this is the correct Winifred? It is just possible, even though Winifred died in 1924, for Ros was born in the early years of the 20th century and had not, to my knowledge, even reached the age of twenty when she started learning the ropes under the watchful eye of Lilian Baylis at the Old Vic.

I may never discover the full story behind the framed photograph but nothing can diminish the joy I take in its possession.

What is without doubt is that the signature is genuine and that Ellen Terry played Volumnia at the Lyceum Theatre in London in 1901 opposite Sir Henry Irving as Coriolanus. Her diary entry for 16 April, one of several recorded in her memoirs, reads: “The critics who wrote their notices at the dress-rehearsal, and complained of my playing pranks with the text, were a little premature. Oh, how bad it makes one feel to find that they all think my Volumnia ‘sweet’, and I thought I was fierce, contemptuous, overbearing. Worse, I felt as if I must be appearing like a cabman rating his Drury Lane wife!” By 20 April, however, she feels she is “beginning to play Volumnia a little better.”

The actress later comments on parents in Shakespeare’s plays: “How many times Shakespeare draws fathers and daughters, and how little stock he seems to take of mothers! Portia and Desdemona, Cordelia, Rosalind and Miranda, Lady Macbeth, Queen Katherine and Hermione, Ophelia, Jessica, Hero, and many more are daughters of fathers, but of their mothers we hear nothing. My own daughter called my attention to this fact quite recently, and it is really a singular fact. Of mothers of sons there are plenty of examples: Constance, Volumnia, the Countess Roussillon, Gertrude; but if there are mothers of daughters at all, they are poor examples, like Juliet’s mother and Mrs. Page.”

She goes on to wonder “if in all the many hundreds of books written on Shakespeare and his plays this point has been taken up?” Having once written a paper on ‘Letters in Shakespeare’s Plays’, which she had thought to be the first of its kind, she was given a rude awakening when she received a letter from a lady from Oxford who said she was “mistaken in thinking that there was no other contribution to the subject”. Enclosed was an essay of the lady’s own which led the actress to conclude that someone must have already addressed “Shakespeare’s patronage of fathers and neglect of mothers!” She wonders what the mothers of Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia were like: “I think Lear must have married twice.”

Sarah Vernon © 29-04-05

• This is a revised version of an article first published on the Rogues & Vagabonds website 29-04-05 and transferred to the R&V blog on 29-03-13

Related articles

• Coriolanus and the Emotions of Revenge (nijheer.wordpress.com)
• Boy of Tears: Coriolanus (nijheer.wordpress.com)
• Exposure (thesenseofajourney.com)

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First Night Design | Bembridge Lifeboat Station #Art #New

Click to buy Bembridge Lifeboat Station framed print (Fine Art America) © Sarah Vernon

As some of you know, our summer holidays as children were spent in Bembridge on the Isle of Wight where I now live. The other week I trundled round on my mobility scooter visiting my favourite haunts. This shot of Bembridge Lifeboat Station through the trees is just where the steps lead down to the beach and to the exact spot we invariably used for swimming.

It is true the original photograph is rather appealing and some of you on Facebook have already seen it as my header but true to form, I had to play.

I used two textures from Design Cuts — a yellow-based and a green-based one. I ran the photograph through Topaz Impression three or four times to produce different effects. I chose to layer ‘Cezanne 1’ and ’Cavedweller’ (as you do) and blended them with the textures to produce a digital painting. I hope it pleases you as much as it did me in its creation.

Click to buy Bembridge Lifeboat Station tote bag (Fine Art America) © Sarah Vernon

Part of a paper read to the Ladies of Shanklin Evening Institute, October 1951.

“It is quite possible that some among you are quite ignorant of everything connected with Lifeboat work […] I have no intention of going back into remote history, or to the founding of the Institution in 1824.  Moreover, I expect you will think that I have gone back quite far enough if I commence with the time of your grandfathers, and I select that particular time because it was then that the proud reputation of the Lifeboat Institution was built up, on the great hearts and stout muscles of the grand old men who served as crews for the small pulling and sailing lifeboats stationed round our coasts.  But to really understand the heroism of these grand old fellows, and to give them full credit for their marvellous rescues, and for their self-sacrificing efforts, one must be possessed of…” Bembridge Lifeboat

Available at the following galleries:
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Zazzle US
Zazzle UK
Fine Art America [14 fulfillment centers in 5 countries]
Saatchi Art

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Autumn Fabrication Greeting Card | Zazzle

This is a very old design which I hadn’t looked it in years and now that I do so with newly-minted eyes, I like it rather more than I did at the time. It is, in fact, a straight scan of an old cushion so it didn’t take much designing!

Source: Autumn Fabrication Greeting Card | Zazzle

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Time After Time Poster | Zazzle #Sold!

Source: Time After Time Poster | Zazzle

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Swallow with Flowers Mouse Pad | Zazzle #Sold!

Original & vintage art © First Night Design [www.firstnightdesign.wordpress.com]

Source: Swallow with Flowers Mouse Pad | Zazzle

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First Night Design | Apples and Pears in a Hallway #Art

Apples And Pears In A Hallway Framed Print from Fine Art America

The photograph I used as my starting point was taken a year ago at an erstwhile (and that’s another story to be told when I’m ready) friend’s hallway. I threw together a couple of books — vintage copies of Jane Austen’s Emma and Northanger Abbey that I bought from the shop attached to Chawton House in Steventon — a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey whisky and a wooden ‘bothy’ bowl that I bought from Garden Trading; I’ve since bought several more! The lilies were already on the hall table.

As is my way, I added a couple of textures from Design Cuts and some apples from an image by Leti Kugler at Unsplash.

Oh, I nearly forgot. Some of you might recognise the print on the wall. Yes, it’s Copper Pear.

Available at the following galleries:
Redbubble
Crated
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK
Fine Art America [14 fulfillment centers in 5 countries]
Saatchi Art

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First Night Design | You’re a Brick, Angela! #Reblog

FROM THE ARCHIVE: 24th September 2014
The Court-Harman Girls Greeting Card School stories have always been popular and continue so to be. When I was a child, my contemporaries and I were suckers for Elinor M Brent-Dyer’s Chalet S…

Source: First Night Design | You’re a Brick, Angela!

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At The Water’s Edge Throw Pillow for Sale by Sarah Vernon

At The Water’s Edge Throw Pillow by Sarah Vernon. Our throw pillows are made from 100% spun polyester poplin fabric and add a stylish statement to any room. Pillows are available in sizes from 14″ x 14″ up to 26″ x 26″. Each pillow is printed on both sides (same image) and includes a concealed zipper and removable insert (if selected) for easy cleaning.

Source: At The Water’s Edge Throw Pillow for Sale by Sarah Vernon

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