Beatrice and Benedick Postcard | Zazzle #Sold!

BALTHASAR
(singing)
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,

BENEDICK
I would my horse had the speed of your
tongue, and so good a continuer, but keep your
way, i’ God’s name, I have done.
BEATRICE
You always end with a jade’s trick. I know
you of old.
(1.1.139-143)

Source: Beatrice and Benedick Postcard | Zazzle

Take care and keep laughing!

Sir John Gilbert & Shakespeare – The View From Sari’s World

Poor mad Ophelia

Sir John Gilbert (1817-1897) the famous English painter and illustrator, is now remembered for his woodcut illustrations for the works of Shakespeare though in his lifetime he preferred his medieva…

Source: Sir John Gilbert & Shakespeare – The View From Sari’s World

First Night Design | ‘Make Me a Willow Cabin…’ #Valentine

Make Me a Willow Cabin Valentine Postcard

Make Me a Willow Cabin was created some time ago but I don’t think I’ve ever sold it as a greeting card or postcard or on anything, which is a shame. I’m rather fond of it.

‘Make me a willow cabin…,’ declares Viola to Olivia in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Viola, disguised as Cesario, has been sent by Orsino to declare his love for Olivia. Viola, however, chooses to give the message in her own way, telling Olivia that if he, Cesario, were in love with her, he would go much further than simply send a go-between.

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First Night Design | ‘Horses make a landscape look beautiful…’ #Art

Black Stallion © Sarah Vernon – Buy at Crated

Created in Photoshop with a Bakst illustration from Wikimedia and a texture by Lenabem-Anna J, which I adapted with one of my own textures.

Black Stallion Greeting Cards at Zazzle by FirstNightDesign

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“It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.”
Adlai E. Stevenson II

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Black Stallion Throw Pillows at Zazzle by FirstNightDesign

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“Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. ”
W.C. Fields

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Black Stallion Tote Bag © Sarah Vernon – Buy at Fine Art America

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“Horses make a landscape look beautiful.”
Alice Walker

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Black Stallion Square Wall Clock at Zazzle by FirstNightDesign

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“When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes. ”
― William Shakespeare, Henry V

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First Night Design | Love is Not Love… Tote Bag #Valentine

Love is Not Love… Tote Bag © Sarah Vernon

A very quick post to tell you I’m back! Yesterday was exhausting as I waded through thousands of emails. To say I’ll catch up with your posts from the last few days would be extremely stupid as I know from experience that it just ain’t gonna happen. But I hope to start afresh today.

SONNET 116

[The italics denote which part of the sonnet is quoted on the bag.]

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | ‘Like a Lapwing’ #Art

‘Like a Lapwing’ © Sarah Vernon

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‘For look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs
Close by the ground, to hear our conference.’
Hero talking with Ursula about Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Act III, Scene I

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I was completely wrong when I published the Ruddy Duck post to say it was the fourth in my bird collection using images from The Biodiversity Heritage Library on Flickr; it was the third. ‘Like a Lapwing’ is my fourth!

To read more about lapwings, visit Wikimedia. Can you tell I don’t have the energy to add information about lapwings in my own words? Nor can I summon the wherewithal to find a better source of information!

The quote, by the way, is a favourite from Much Ado. My mother was lucky enough to see Peggy Ashcroft as Beatrice at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1950. “When Dame Peg made her entrance in the scene, she was exactly like a lapwing,” said my mother.

[Sir John] Gielgud revived his own colourful, ingeniously designed 1949 production a year later, casting himself as Benedick to Peggy Ashcroft’s Beatrice. On the first night the pair drank a bottle of champagne before going on – and according to Gielgud “never played so well in our lives”. London would see the show in 1952 and 1955. The Daily Telegraph

‘Like a Lapwing’ will soon be available to buy.

Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1885)

Buy Now! The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra – Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1885)

The work of the Dutch-born artist Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema [1836-1912] is unmistakable. A dazzling Mediterranean sea? Exquisitely rendered marble? A delectable female or two draped in classical robes? The chances are you’re looking at a painting by Alma-Tadema. His detailed brush strokes and rich colours owe much to his Dutch forebears and while one might consider his paintings to be somewhat chocolate-box pretty, it’s difficult  not to be charmed by them. You may remember that the last time I mentioned Sir Lawrence was when I adapted another of his pieces, Ask Me No More, for The Proposal.

Lourens Alma Tadema [Wikipedia]

The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra was commissioned by a Samuel Hawk of New York in 1883 and painted in 1885, its inspiration taken from Shakespeare’s play. Alma-Tadema trained at the Royal Academy of Antwerp in Belgium but moved to England in 1870 and there he remained, though he was in Wiesbaden, Germany, when he died in 1912.

Lourens Alma Tadema’s birth house and statue in Dronrijp, Netherlands [Wikipedia]

Framed Print at Fine Art America

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First Night Design | Beatrice and Benedick

Beatrice and Benedick © Sarah Vernon

This painting of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving as Beatrice and Benedict in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing in 1882 is from The Library of Congress and enchanting in its own right.

The background is a blend of the interior of The Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in 1851 from an old encyclopaedia — the venue was originally constructed in Hyde Park and the exhibition was organised by Prince Albert and Henry Cole — and textures from 2 Lil’ Owls.

As soon as I layered the actors over the blended background, it conjured up the likes of William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti!

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Benedick
That I neither feel how she should be loved
nor know how she should be worthy is the opinion
that fire cannot melt out of me. I will die in it at the
stake.

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First Night Design | “Blow that word charm! There is more to my acting…”

Dame Ellen Terry as Beatrice Cards

Miss Ellen Terry as Beatrice Throw Pillows

It is such a treat to have sold a greeting card of Ellen Terry as Beatrice in Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing alongside a matching cushion. I have lived with this theatrical postcard all my life. It was given to my mother by an actress friend and my mother handed it on to me.

In her memoir, The Story of My Life: Recollections and Reflections, Dame Ellen writes:

‘When Henry Irving put on “Much Ado About Nothing”—a play which he may be said to have done for me, as he never really liked the part of Benedick—I was not the same Beatrice at all. A great actor can do nothing badly, and there was so very much to admire in Henry Irving’s Benedick. But he gave me little help. Beatrice must be swift, swift, swift! Owing to Henry’s rather finicking, deliberate method as Benedick, I could never put the right pace into my part. I was also feeling unhappy about it, because I had been compelled to give way about a traditional “gag” in the church scene, with which we ended the fourth act. In my own production we had scorned this gag, and let the curtain come down on Benedick’s line: “Go, comfort your cousin; I must say she is dead, and so farewell.” When I was told that we were to descend to the buffoonery of:

Beatrice: Benedick, kill him—kill him if you can.
Benedick: As sure as I’m alive, I will!

I protested, and implored Henry not to do it. He said that it was necessary: otherwise the “curtain” would be received in dead silence. I assured him that we had often had seven and eight calls without it. I used every argument, artistic and otherwise. Henry, according to his custom, was gentle, would not discuss it much, but remained obdurate. After holding out for a week, I gave in. “It’s my duty to obey your orders, and do it,” I said, “but I do it under protest.” Then I burst into tears. It was really for his sake just as much as for mine. I thought it must bring such disgrace on him! Looking back on the incident, I find that the most humorous thing in connection with it was that the critics, never reluctant to accuse Henry of “monkeying” with Shakespeare if they could find cause, never noticed the gag at all!

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Ellen Terry drawn from photographs by Albert Sterner and included in her memoir.

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“This mutable woman, all instinct, sympathy and sensation, is as painstaking a student and as careful of the dignity of her art as Flaubert himself.” Virginia Woolf

“[Her name] rings like a chime through the last quarter of the 19th century.” George Bernard Shaw

“Blow that word charm! There is more to my acting than charm!” Ellen Terry

These three quotes are taken from a Lynne Truss article in The Guardian.

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Take care and keep laughing!

First Night Design | “Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!”

Romantic Meeting © Sarah Vernon

A lovely vintage image from The Graphics Fairy tarted up by me with texture and grunge from my magic cupboard!

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“Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear,
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows
As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessèd my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!
For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”
― William Shakespeare

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First Night Design | Love is All You Need

My internet connection is even worse today so no chance of doing a new post. Here’s a Valentine one from a year ago. I am aware that you’ve seen the first one recently!

First Night Design

One of the most insightful of quotes about love and the nature of relationships comes from William Shakespeare and features on an early design of mine.

Love is Not Love… Card by FirstNightDesign

“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove.” Shakespeare, sonnet 116

It is easy to forget this when young.  Desperate for love after a confusing  and contradictory set of lessons from childhood, I would constantly alter and bend in my late teens and early 20s.  This is not love.  If the object of your affections wants to mould you a certain way, or you get the feeling he or she is not going to like you if you behave a certain way, this is not love.

If someone loves you, they love you, warts and all, and it matters not a jot if you have heavy thighs or a…

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First Night Design | ‘Love is not love which alters when…’

Love is Not Love… Card

Love is Not Love… Card

Love is Not Love… Cards

Shakespeare sonnet 116: ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove’.

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First Night Design | Copper Pear

Copper Pear © Sarah Vernon [Crated]

Vintage pear from The Graphics Fairy.

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“I warrant they would whip me with their fine wits till I were as crest-fallen as a dried pear.” The Merry Wives of Windsor

‘Eating pears cleans the teeth.’ Korean proverb

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First Night Design | Jane Austen | International Women’s Day

A re-blog from the archive.

First Night Design

International Women’s Day 8th March 2014

To mark the day, I am paying tribute to a woman whose influence has been remarkable, whose work has inspired generation after generation, and to whom I just happen to be distantly related!

When I was first introduced to Jane Austen, I found her difficult to read. This was partly because she was labeled a ‘classic’ writer that we had to study at school, along with Dickens and Shakespeare and so forth, and our English teacher was evidently an actress manqué whose renditions rendered us speechless with horror.  I loathed Shakespeare until my parents took me to an RSC production of Twelfth Night with Judi Dench, Richard Pasco and Elizabeth Spriggs.  Immediately I understood what the fuss was about.

My parents introduced me to many artistic delights but the time when they would have urged me to read Austen was a time…

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First Night Design | Jane Austen | International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day 8th March 2014

To mark the day, I am paying tribute to a woman whose influence has been remarkable, whose work has inspired generation after generation, and to whom I just happen to be distantly related!

Embed from Getty Images

When I was first introduced to Jane Austen, I found her difficult to read. This was partly because she was labeled a ‘classic’ writer that we had to study at school, along with Dickens and Shakespeare and so forth, and our English teacher was evidently an actress manqué whose renditions rendered us speechless with horror.  I loathed Shakespeare until my parents took me to an RSC production of Twelfth Night with Judi Dench, Richard Pasco and Elizabeth Spriggs.  Immediately I understood what the fuss was about.

My parents introduced me to many artistic delights but the time when they would have urged me to read Austen was a time that the family was wrenched apart by my mother’s manic depression. Perhaps if they’d told me at that time that there was a blood connection, I just might have approached Pride and Prejudice or Mansfield Park a little differently. I don’t know. As it was, I didn’t read Jane Austen for myself until my late teens, at which point I fell utterly and completely in love with all her work and everything about her.

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One of the best books I’ve read about Jane Austen is a fascinating volume by Fay Weldon, Letters to Alice in which she casts fresh eyes upon Jane’s work through a series of letters to her niece. She debunks the myths and pours scorn on some of the theories that have grown up around the name and the work.  Weldon does this with humour that matches Jane’s. It is well worth reading.

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As for the blood connection, I didn’t learn about that until the late ’80s, early 90s.  I’d known forever that Leigh was a maternal family name but not where it came from, only that my mother had chosen it for her stage name when someone told her that she would never see her name in lights with the number of syllables contained in ‘Benedicta Hoskyns’! I also knew of several forebears whose middle names included Leigh and others whose surname was Leigh. If you know your Austen, you will know where I’m heading! When I did some research, I discovered exactly how we were related to Jane. Even my mother didn’t know the details.

Jane’s mother was Cassandra Leigh. Cassandra’s father, Thomas, was part of the Leigh family of Adlestrop, Gloucestershire. He had a pugnacious brother, Jane’s great-uncle, Theophilus Leigh (1693-1784), who was Master of Balliol for more than 50 years and known for ‘overflowing with puns and witticisms and sharp retorts‘. These are the words of Jane’s brothers’ descendants, William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh in Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters, which was published in 1913 as an updated follow-up to Jane’s nephew, James Edward Austen Leigh’s memoir — A Memoir of Jane Austen: and Other Family Recollections — from 1870. These two later Austens go on to say that Theophilus’ ‘most serious joke was his practical one of living much longer than had been expected or intended’!

So where do I come in?  Theo, as I feel I can call him — somehow I doubt that was ever the case in his lifetime! — had several children, one of whom, Mary, went on to marry Sir Hungerford Hoskyns, 4th Baronet.  I come down from there but I won’t bore you with the details! To cut a long story short, Jane Austen’s great-uncle was my great-grandfather seven times removed — or near enough!

Take care and keep laughing!