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Showing posts with label EASTERN EUROPE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EASTERN EUROPE. Show all posts

Romanian Insect Orchestra

Yes, that is a beetle playing a cello, a snail playing a saxophone.....



......and a locust playing a xylophone



I found this insane little item on my trip to Cluj Napoca in Transylvania, Romania.  Saw it nestling in an Antiques market in the town and knew I had to grab it as in my opinion there aren't enough Eastern European musical insect ensembles around these days.  

It probably dates from around the 1940's or 50's. Hurrah for surreal ceramics!


Hungarian Book Covers

Just got back from adventuring in Transylvania and Hungary.  Found all of these titles by chance in a backstreet bookshop in Budapest - my favourites are the first few surreal and sci fi beauties.

Some fairly unhinged imagery similar to the covers I featured last year from Lviv in the Ukraine.

The whole hoard has some interesting graphic and illustrative styles, with the titles seemed to date from around the 1950's to 1970's.  I think the best one is the naked alien people with the block of colour over their eyes, yes! I managed to smuggle it home so they now greet me daily as I wake up;  the jury's still out on what the long term effects of this are.


Some nice 1950's covers too

And some great very minimal reduced shapes and graphics

Bold greens and reds made these simple covers stand out too

Anyway, Transylvania was a winner! Icy tundras, hearty stodge, alcoholic blueberry tea and rambling taxi rides to rural villages where they still use horses and carts and farming has remained pretty much the same as 100 years ago. 


We were also lucky enough to be invited into a local woman Susanna's home, and got to marvel at her extensive collection of enamelware, vintage units, tea sets and alarming amounts of kitsch.


We stayed in a welcoming town called Cluj Napoca - home of the Cheeky Girls, who we incidentally SAW which made us chortle for around a week.  Romanians are super affable types and the language is actually, thankfully, more like Spanish or Italian as opposed to some of the Eastern countries who think nothing of putting five consonants in a row like this is normal sane practice.

Well worth a visit and apparently neighbouring Moldova is also excellent in summer.  Just don't order this utter beast if you can help it (there was a massive slab of pork underneath all that too).

Brest Fortress, Belarus


Currently more than a little enamoured with the sensational Soviet War memorial at Brest Fortress, Belarus built to commemorate the 1941 battle on the site.


Epic proportions of stern stone - makes me also think of the gutsy Treptower Park Soviet War memorial in Berlin.

Katowice, Poland

Just got back from a (bumpy) roadtrip from Berlin to Katowice in Poland to attend the OFF festival.  Was inspired by this stylish gemoetric lady en route at a Polski service station...


The OFF festival was a really nicely curated event on an air field where you could lazily watch planes doing loop the loops above you by day then by night experience all manner of experimental musical wonders.  It was only £50 for 3 days too. And £1.20 a pint..

Some excellent sonic journeys were had via a heady amalgamation of Syrian wedding fever, industrial otherworldiness, African drumming sensation and psychedelic walls of sound courtesy of Omar Souleyman, Factory Floor, Konono No 1 and Emeralds

Also heard some great hazy ambient drone from Oneohtrix Point Never - playing with all sorts of synths and noises that were perfect for the late night 3am on the fringes of consciousness slot:




Couldn't face leaving Eastern Europe without smuggling back some kind of faded ephemera so when I spied a murky shop labelled ANTIK in Katowice town centre I scuttled in for a rummage and found this 1940's beauty.


I really rate Poland, affable people who don't mind giving you directions at 11pm when you've been lost in industrial wastelands for 3 hours and have started to attack your own steering wheel, and some cheap and lovely native vodka that comes in various handy pocket sizes.  A winner.



Russian children's postcards



Some Russian postcards that look like animation stills picked up in Lviv, Ukraine and looking to date from the late 60's from the text and postmarks on the back.   Re. the boy on the first card - I wonder if being kissed on the forehead at a young age by a weeping short wearing goat man might be something that hangs around the psyche for a while. 

And maybe it's just the faded green hues and the forest setting, but something about the second postcard reminded me of oddball early 80's British cartoon Willo the Wisp and made the character below ('Evil Edna') creep out of my unconscious for the first time in a few decades.  Unsuprisingly, it would seem she is still fairly terrifying to 30 year old adults:


Not many posts of late as I've been super busy co-organising the North London Vintage Market - a big new fair selling all sorts of mid century homeware, collectables and curiosities.  Come and say hello if you're near, it's this Saturday Feb 12th in Crouch End, North London - more details on the official site

Russian Agatha Christie book

This intriguing cover was one I got most attached to at the book market in Lviv (I managed to smuggle it home too) Printed in Moscow in 1991 this is actually a copy of The Listerdale Mystery, one of the Hercule Poirot novels by Agatha Christie.

The surreal hand-drawn illustrations seem to point towards unconscious forces and darkened hidey holes of the psyche.  Chillingly brilliant.

Realising the book was attached to somebody as familiar and widely exposed as Agatha Christie almost diluted it's appeal for me for a moment though, I'd much rather have found these images in somebody's long lost sketchbook hidden in a Ukranian attic....

Mysterious looking Russian covers...

These are some more of my choice picks from the Ukraine - some spectacularly sinister undertones to these particular covers.  

The triangles and angular shapes in the illustrated cover just above reminds me a bit of the aesthetic of German Expressionism. 


Whilst the more contemporary title one with the multiple faces is just quietly terrifying. 

Russian & Polish covers

Another crop of excellent covers from Lviv's book market.  

The cover with the black and white building is so prominent - one of the convival book dealer men told me the beautiful block on the front is in Kiev.  Some eye catching typography and Constructivist reference points as well as some classic late 60's/early 70's psychedelic looking covers too.  

The last of these to come next time! I've saved the more enigmatic looking covers until then...