First Night Design | New! The Easter Hat Box #VintageArt

The Easter Hat Box Greeting Card © Sarah Vernon at Redbubble

This is an original vintage colour lithograph by Frank A. Nankwell used for a Puck periodical cover in 1899 (April 5) from The Library of Congress and copyrighted by Keppler & Schwarzman. Easter has never looked so attractive!

Please note that Zazzle is taking a long time for this design to show in search results.

Available at the following galleries:
Redbubble
Zazzle US
Zazzle UK
Fine Art America [14 fulfilment centres in 5 countries]

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Swan & Edgar’s Fashionable Furs #A Postcard | Zazzle #Sold!!

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

Source: Swan & Edgar’s Fashionable Furs #A Postcard | Zazzle

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

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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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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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View of a Harbour – Caspar David Friedrich Card | Zazzle #Sold!

View of a Harbour – Caspar David Friedrich Card created by FirstNightVintage.

Source: View of a Harbour – Caspar David Friedrich Card | Zazzle

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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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“Abandoned Hideaway” Greeting Cards by Sarah Vernon | Redbubble #Sold!

Features / PixElations 29 June 2016 / I’m delighted with the effect of a Kerstin Frank texture on my photograph of a run-down shed in my friend’s garden! (Photoshop) • Also buy this artwork on stationery, apparel, stickers, and more.

Source: “Abandoned Hideaway” Greeting Cards by Sarah Vernon | Redbubble

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“Clowns of the Sea” Greeting Cards by Sarah Vernon | Redbubble #Sold!

Features / Creation 24 April 2016 / Digital Collage in Photoshop. Puffins: ‘Nicknamed ’sea parrots’ – and sometimes ‘clowns of the sea’! – Atlantic puffins have black and white feathers and a large parrot-like beak. They are small seabirds measuring around 25cm in length.’ / 2 Lil’ Owls – 2LO~French Script antique papers 2-13. / Puffin – Biodiversity Library. / Flora – Biodiversity Library. • Also buy this artwork on stationery, apparel, stickers, and more.

Source: “Clowns of the Sea” Greeting Cards by Sarah Vernon | Redbubble

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Patchworks VIII Greeting Card | Zazzle #Sold!

Original & vintage art © First Night Design

Source: Patchworks VIII Greeting Card | Zazzle

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The Actresses Card | Zazzle #Sold!

I’m delighted to have sold two of these greeting cards. It’s a montage of British actresses from the late 19th and early 20th century from my theatrical postcard collection. Those of you interested in theatre greats will be happy to learn that Dame Ellen Terry features three times, for which I make no apology! If young actors have not heard of her, they have no right to be on the stage. [Ed. Too obstinate?] As the late Alan Rickman said — and I’m oft repeating —  “The profession should be and is a kind of relay race – about information, opinions and passions being passed on.” [Theatregoer Magazine, November 2001]

Source: The Actresses Card | Zazzle

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“The Louise Brooks Tattoo” by Sarah Vernon | Redbubble #Sold!

Features / Hat Heads 25 March 2014 / Inspired by Edward Steichen’s headshot of Hollywood actress Gloria Swanson covered in lace (Museum of Modern Art). / Photoshop / Louise Brooks: Hello-Tuesday / Wallpaper: MGB-Stock /

The still is from a 1928 film, Beggars of Life, where Brooks plays a girl who disguises herself in beggar’s clothing to escape the police after killing her abusive stepfather. Directed by William Wellman, it also stars Wallace Beery, Richard Arlen and Roscoe Karns, and was based on a book by Jim Tully, published in 1924.

• Buy this artwork on home decor, stationery, bags, and more.

Source: “The Louise Brooks Tattoo” by Sarah Vernon | Redbubble

N.B. I’m not currently responding to comments or visiting blogs because of ill-health but I much appreciate your support.

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