More Sailor Jerry Souvenirs

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I've posted before about our wonderful Sailor Jerry shower curtain, adorned with sheets of his flash work. The other Sailor Jerry items we own therefore look best in the bathroom, & here they are!

We have two old bottles from our drinking days. Sailor Jerry rum was my husband's poison of choice & these are two souvenirs from those hedonistic times.

The bottles themselves have a classic vintage styling. The inner side of the back label is always printed with one of Jerry's pin up girl tattoo designs.

The playing cards & glass were a freebie from my old friend John, who worked in The Rotterdam Bar down at the docks in Belfast.
The bar is situated in the area nicknamed "Sailor Town" & was terribly quaint. I believe it closed recently due to redevelopment plans of the area, but I could be wrong.

The mug is in fact a Vince Ray illustration, but worth including. Bought in the tattoo parlour in St.Stephen's Green, Dublin.

Claire

Gambling Kitsch

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Two modern kitsch items, produced in the past few years, but sit along nicely with my authentic bits & pieces.

Both have some quirky design features. The replica bowling pin is actually a lamp, when plugged in it lights in the standing position & when knocked over the light goes out. It's from German Ebay.

The giant die is a pc cd disc holder, pushing one of the sides pops out a drawer for storing CDs without jewel cases.
Not sure where it's from, it was a gift from my Mummy for Christmas.

Claire

Vintage Ladybird Book Covers used as Kitchen Border

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Sometimes kitsch lives in nostalgia. Old design & branding bringing back warm, familiar feelings & a "things were better in our day" mood.

Ladybird books have spotted this market & now sell a range of cake tins, memo-boards & mugs adorned with the Learn to Read covers from the 70s & 80s.

If like me you learnt your words with the help of Peter & Jane and Kathy & Mark, not to forget Socks the dog, then just seeing some of these illustrations will bring memories flooding back.

Ladybird Vintage Prints online also provide a service to order any of the pages from their hundreds of informational books as glorious, full colour prints.

I chose a cheap option & printed out little versions of some of the illustrations I liked best.
Now in plain, dirt-cheap ikea frames, I think they look quite nice along the back of the kitchen counter.

Claire

Tattoo Roulette CSAimages.com

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Something a bit different today, one of my favourite websites with pant-wettingly perfect kitsch images.

CSAimages.com calls itself a brainstorming tool & also sells stock photos for commercial & private use.
There are photographs & illustrations but all have a real retro, eames era, modernist, tongue-in-cheek twist.

The reason why the title of this post is "tattoo roulette" is because I reckon I could safely say any random print stock image off the site, would make a cool tattoo. I think the number of pictures I adore on the site could cover my whole body in tattoos!

My husband has bought me two of their books, published under the name Pop Ink, for gifts over the years.

Claire

Ugly Kitsch Art In Situ

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I've now blogged on each of these prints seperately, but in doing so have excluded you from the wonder that is so much bad taste condensed in one room's wall space.

We moved house this year & in our old flat I had every single picture on one wall in the kitchen. It was hideous & majestic. On moving to our house I've felt perhaps they look a little lost spead out on the bigger walls.

The wall in the dining room with the five Dallas Simpson, sad gypsy children I think works well. But the poodle-Jesus combo doesn't look quite right.

A friend pointed out an article on Fortean Times this week about this style of art & hauntings of homes. I'm not supersticious, but I still didn't delve any further into the urban legends for fear of spooking myself. I've over half a dozen of them!

Claire