Lynn - Books are £6 plus £10 p&p = £16 = $25.27.
Try e-mailing me on my hotmail account: southseabubble2011@hotmail.co.uk
Tuesday, 14 February 2012
Sunday, 8 January 2012
The book clearout continues
A few more to browse through. I have tried to keep prices competitive but can't compete with penny deals on Amazon, especially as many of these came to me from 2nd hand bookshops! The postage is the killer as you can post only the very lightest of publications for less than £1.75 now, and I have to add a few pennies for the wrapping. We have to drive to the PO too (6 mile round trip) which means I have to combine PO trips with other journeys. The heavier the book(s), up to a point, the better value the postage is! I will of course combine postage if several books are purchased together.
The Romany books are ones I read in my childhood and date from the time around the 2nd World War. The only one with a complete dust jacket is the one above. They have seen better days, I will admit, and don't have collector value due to the inscriptions on the inside page, but Romany wrote about nature and wild life in a very child-friendly way, and the books have lovely b&w illustrations and photographs. There is a Romany Society too!
Anyway, these are all £3.00 each plus £2 p&p each (2nd class).
I bought this for myself and then found his book which has several of the London books he wrote as a London omnibus (no pun intended!)
If you haven't come across H V Morton before, then you will be amazed by his knowledge and research about the places he mentioned. He wrote a abroad spectrum of books, about other countries too, not just Britain. He also never failed to find the most intriguing twist to tales of human nature.
For instance, "In Uncle's Shop": "In came a little wisp of a woman. She put sixpence on the counter. I noticed her thin wrists and the criss-cross grimed lines o her fingers. She called the pawnbroker "sir". When she had gone he showed me the article on which she was paying interest. It was a small box with mother-of-pearl diamonds set in the lid, many of them missing. She had been paying interest for two years.
In every pawnshop there are thousands of things like this box: links with happier days perhaps, things which sentiment enthrones in the heart. I could build up a dozen stories round this box: the gift of a mother, a dead husband, a son? A Pandora's box full of the winds of old happiness? i leave it to your imagination."
Price: £2.50 plus £2 p&p 2nd class. SOLD.
According to the back cover Avalon exists. The authors "challenge the accepted theories about early British history and Arthur, providing a solution to the mystery of Avalon." Don't they all? A good read though, with excellent illustrations and a different approach to the myth and magic of Arthur. Price: £3.50 plus £2.75 p&p 2nd class.
Geoffrey Ashe has long been an authority on Arthurian legend and indeed this reprint of 2007 celebrated 50 years having elapsed since its original publication. Geoffrey Ashe gives an excellent preface which "reviews developments in Arthurian study over the intervening years and today's present day perspective." It's a must if you are interested in Arthur and his story. Price: £2.50 plus £2.50 p&p 2nd class.
You will be sensing a theme by now . . . It never fails to amaze me that researchers return again and again to this legendary hero and always find something new to say, another angle . . . Price: £1.75 plus £2 p&p 2nd class.
Those were the days - the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries . . . This comprehensive vintage booklet dates from 1949 but much of the advice contained within its covers is still very relevant today. It covers all aspects of choosing, planting, growing, pollination, propogation and pests and is very well illustrated with drawings, diagrams and photographs. Price: £2.50 plus £2.50 p&p 2nd class.
Teach yourself Manx Gaelic with this copy of First Lessons in Manx by Edmund Goodwin (published 1947). Just the thing to blow away the cobwebs of the brain and think how impressed your friends would be if you said something to them in Manx! Price: £2 plus £2 p&p 2nd class.
The Romany books are ones I read in my childhood and date from the time around the 2nd World War. The only one with a complete dust jacket is the one above. They have seen better days, I will admit, and don't have collector value due to the inscriptions on the inside page, but Romany wrote about nature and wild life in a very child-friendly way, and the books have lovely b&w illustrations and photographs. There is a Romany Society too!Anyway, these are all £3.00 each plus £2 p&p each (2nd class).
* * *
I bought this for myself and then found his book which has several of the London books he wrote as a London omnibus (no pun intended!)If you haven't come across H V Morton before, then you will be amazed by his knowledge and research about the places he mentioned. He wrote a abroad spectrum of books, about other countries too, not just Britain. He also never failed to find the most intriguing twist to tales of human nature.
For instance, "In Uncle's Shop": "In came a little wisp of a woman. She put sixpence on the counter. I noticed her thin wrists and the criss-cross grimed lines o her fingers. She called the pawnbroker "sir". When she had gone he showed me the article on which she was paying interest. It was a small box with mother-of-pearl diamonds set in the lid, many of them missing. She had been paying interest for two years.
In every pawnshop there are thousands of things like this box: links with happier days perhaps, things which sentiment enthrones in the heart. I could build up a dozen stories round this box: the gift of a mother, a dead husband, a son? A Pandora's box full of the winds of old happiness? i leave it to your imagination."
Price: £2.50 plus £2 p&p 2nd class. SOLD.
* * *
According to the back cover Avalon exists. The authors "challenge the accepted theories about early British history and Arthur, providing a solution to the mystery of Avalon." Don't they all? A good read though, with excellent illustrations and a different approach to the myth and magic of Arthur. Price: £3.50 plus £2.75 p&p 2nd class.* * *
Geoffrey Ashe has long been an authority on Arthurian legend and indeed this reprint of 2007 celebrated 50 years having elapsed since its original publication. Geoffrey Ashe gives an excellent preface which "reviews developments in Arthurian study over the intervening years and today's present day perspective." It's a must if you are interested in Arthur and his story. Price: £2.50 plus £2.50 p&p 2nd class.* * *
You will be sensing a theme by now . . . It never fails to amaze me that researchers return again and again to this legendary hero and always find something new to say, another angle . . . Price: £1.75 plus £2 p&p 2nd class.* * *
Those were the days - the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries . . . This comprehensive vintage booklet dates from 1949 but much of the advice contained within its covers is still very relevant today. It covers all aspects of choosing, planting, growing, pollination, propogation and pests and is very well illustrated with drawings, diagrams and photographs. Price: £2.50 plus £2.50 p&p 2nd class.* * *
Teach yourself Manx Gaelic with this copy of First Lessons in Manx by Edmund Goodwin (published 1947). Just the thing to blow away the cobwebs of the brain and think how impressed your friends would be if you said something to them in Manx! Price: £2 plus £2 p&p 2nd class.
Saturday, 7 January 2012
And a couple of books for starters . . .
The Riding Instructor's HandbookThe information still applies today, although this book dates from the 1980s. Well-illustrated throughout it is of use to both aspiring instructors and ordinary riders alike. Price: £2 plus £2.25 p&p 2nd class post.
Above and below: Shire Archaeology Guides, various, and Northumberland archaeology. Interesting and informative little booklets, well illustrated. Price: £2 each book + £2 each 2nd class post.
Crossing's Guide to DartmoorFew people knew the moor like William Crossing. The definitive guide is difficult to improve upon. I have two copies - mainly because I thought I had Worth's Guide and it was Crossing's . . . Sketches show you the skyline with tors - all named - from almost every point on the moor, combined with walking routes, history, folk lore, topography, dialect distinctions, archaeology etc. An essential guide. Price: £3.50 plus £3.oo 2nd class p&p (it's quite a chunky little book to post).
GALLIPOT EYES - A Wiltshire Diary
Elspeth Huxley lived in Oaksey for some 35 years, and this diary was kept from April 1974 to March 1975.
"Interwoven with her daily preoccupations (christening presents for the twins; which way up to plant asparagus crowns) she describes the people around her and the ever-changing patterns of village life. We get glimpses of things that have caught her fancy: fox-cubs at play under her window, an elderly neighbour put to flight by an ITV camera-team, a church spire against a winter sky. With the schoolmaster she digs at the foundations of a buried medieval castle built by the earls of Hereford, and in the local library discovers the first identifiable lord of the manor to have been a Saxon diplomat whose flirtation with Duke William's future wife may have cost him his lands and his freedom after the Conquest . . ." Price: £1.50 + £2.50 2nd class p&p.
This is a tidy 1st Edition of this excellent book. We seem to have two copies (as we collect this Batsford collection of titles, and I've chosen to keep a later edition which has a dust jacket). A very neat and tight copy, no fading. Two very slight bumps to top of spine. Price: £15 plus £2.50 p&p. SOLD. This is the price I paid at our excellent 2nd hand bookshop in Llandeilo and if you check with Abebooks, pretty well spot on for the good condition this book is in.
List of chapter contents. No way does it offer any insight on first reading, into the wealth of information and illustrations of how country life was for cottagers prior to the 2nd World War and in many instances, very much before this. There are drawn and photographic illustrations of many unusual pieces of kitchenalia, how "old-fashioned" kitchens looked - the illustration for the Shetland islands is quite an eye-opener!
The text begins:
This book, for the most part, records some aspects of the life of English villages in the past. It relates to customs and manners of living that have almost ceased to be, and it treats of objects that were originated and made to serve the needs of people in bygone times. The men and women who fashioned the old household goods, of the kind here illustrated, represented the typical human contents of the countryside. Born and bred in villages and hamlets,
Along the cool, sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
I am so grateful that Gertrude Jekyll took time off from her gardening pursuits to record a way of life now virtually forgotten, and one which gives meaning to the kitchenalia in my kitchen or antique shops.
* * *
From the same series (which is an extensive one) comes English Villages and Hamlets. This 3rd edition dates from 1941 (with a neat inscription dated 1945. The dust jacket is a little worn and torn on the spine, but otherwise in very good overall condition. Price: £3.50 plus £2.50 p&p. SOLD.
This is another book of total nostalgia, which takes you down "memory lane". You realize how fast "civilization" has moved on in the past 65 or so years when you see photographs of village streets with only horse transport, wet ditches or hedgerows filled with wild flowers (and not trimmed within an inch of their lives by the Council workmen), and roads without tarmac.
What a wonderful time the author must have had when he was travelling around the country to research this book.
He write of Corfe Castle in Dorset (which I know well):
". . . . is the centre of the so-called Isle of Purbeck, is approached from the land through a gap in the Purbeck Hills, and no village can have a surer sense of being defended from the world. In the gap the magnificent ruins of the castle stand on their own green knoll, commanding the countryside to the northward for miles around. The village, which lies to the southward under the protection of the castle, is a large place, but yet a village in spite of recent accretions. The road winds round the base of the castle hill, and you are soon among the little grey stone-roofed houses, with the church above them, and the hospitable portico of the "Greyhound" in the centre of things - the "Greyhound" which is one of the few cream-coloured houses in this grey village, strange to say."
And as I remember it too . . .
. . . lots more to come when I've taken photos.
Please write in comments if you are interested.
Friday, 6 January 2012
Open for business
Contact me HERE if you are interested in buying anything.
More items will be added, so keep popping back. These items are offered for sale as I have a huge vet's bill after we tried to save Tippy (and I've only had the first half of the treatment billed yet!)
Exquisite Crinoline Lady tablecloth (1)
This absolutely lovely tablecloth has a different design in each corner and was worked by a skilled needlewoman in a variety of stitches. The Crinoline Lady herself is very stylish and a la mode! It is quite a unique design and one from a more obscure range than most of the patterns which were available at the time (late 1950s/early 60s again I believe).
Worked on beige linen, it has a double running stitch border, and measures 33" (85 cm) square. It is like new and kept for best.
Price: £20 plus £3 p&p. SOLD.
Stunning Crinoline Lady Tablecloth (2)
You need to see this close to fully appreciate the amount of work which has gone into this beautiful cloth, and the boldness of the design. This is Crinoline Lady at the height of its post-war popularity and it certainly deserves to be used regularly, rather than folded in a drawer and only brought out on high days and holidays, as it is with me.
The deep blue of the dress, with its pink daisies and green lazy daisy leaves and sprigs really stand out, and each corner design is surrounded by profuse garden flowers and four central motifs. There is a very slight teastain on it (so slight I couldn't get it to photograph properly) but you have to look for it to see it at all. Since all these tableclothes are over half a century old, it's part of its history.
Worked on white linen with a drawn thread border, this big tablecloth measures 50" (128 cm) x 54" (138 cm).
Price: £20 plus £3.50 p&p
This bright and colourful tablecloth uses four prime colours in its design, which covers the entire spread of the cloth. It would have taken many hours' patient sewing to finish and once again, has been cared for and kept for best - I don't think it's ever been used.
Worked in long stitch and satin stitch on white cotton, it measures 32" (82 cm) x 34" (86 cm) and would brighten up a little table in a dark corner and provide a real focal point to the room. A plate of Cup Cakes would look delicious on this cloth!
Price: £15 plus £2.50 p&p.
This beautiful tablecloth has a big vase of flowers in each corner. Exquisitely worked in tiny stem stitch and lazy daisy, this would really give the country cottage look to any home.
Worked on white linen with a drawn thread border, this cloth measures 40" square (102 cm) and has been obviously kept for best.
Price: £12.50 plus £3 p&p.
Runner for table or sideboard. This profusely-embroidered piece has a sheaf of flowers as its centrepiece and is the work of a skilled needlewoman as there is not a stitch ill-set on it. The design is continued in sprigs for he width of the runner. Worked on cream linen, it measures 36" (92 cm) long by 11" (28 cm) wide, and has a neat machine-sewn hem. Probably dates from the 1950s or 1960s.
Price: £10.00 plus £2.50 p&p.
Cutwork centrepiece
This pretty embroidered cutwork table centrepiece would look gorgeous with a jug of flowers or a cake on a stand at its centre, or alternatively to take a pretty dressing able set. Worked on linen, in peach and dark green, it measures 19 1/2" long (50 cm) x 13" (33 cm) wide. Probably dates from the 1950s or 60s.
Price: £5 including postage and packing.
Beautiful Crinoline lady table runner
Hand-embroidered on beige material (can't say exactly what the material is, but it has a slight glazed finish) with a fringe border.
Length 48" including fringe (122 ccm) x 11 3/4" wide (30cm). Crinoline Lady at either end, with two daisy sprigs in the centre. Beautifully worked in the prettiest of colours. 1950s vintage.
Price: £5.50 including postage and packing.
More items will be added, so keep popping back. These items are offered for sale as I have a huge vet's bill after we tried to save Tippy (and I've only had the first half of the treatment billed yet!)
Exquisite Crinoline Lady tablecloth (1)
This absolutely lovely tablecloth has a different design in each corner and was worked by a skilled needlewoman in a variety of stitches. The Crinoline Lady herself is very stylish and a la mode! It is quite a unique design and one from a more obscure range than most of the patterns which were available at the time (late 1950s/early 60s again I believe).
Worked on beige linen, it has a double running stitch border, and measures 33" (85 cm) square. It is like new and kept for best.
Price: £20 plus £3 p&p. SOLD.
* * *
Stunning Crinoline Lady Tablecloth (2)
You need to see this close to fully appreciate the amount of work which has gone into this beautiful cloth, and the boldness of the design. This is Crinoline Lady at the height of its post-war popularity and it certainly deserves to be used regularly, rather than folded in a drawer and only brought out on high days and holidays, as it is with me.
The deep blue of the dress, with its pink daisies and green lazy daisy leaves and sprigs really stand out, and each corner design is surrounded by profuse garden flowers and four central motifs. There is a very slight teastain on it (so slight I couldn't get it to photograph properly) but you have to look for it to see it at all. Since all these tableclothes are over half a century old, it's part of its history.
Worked on white linen with a drawn thread border, this big tablecloth measures 50" (128 cm) x 54" (138 cm).
Price: £20 plus £3.50 p&p
* * *
Elegant Floral Tablecloth
This bright and colourful tablecloth uses four prime colours in its design, which covers the entire spread of the cloth. It would have taken many hours' patient sewing to finish and once again, has been cared for and kept for best - I don't think it's ever been used.
Worked in long stitch and satin stitch on white cotton, it measures 32" (82 cm) x 34" (86 cm) and would brighten up a little table in a dark corner and provide a real focal point to the room. A plate of Cup Cakes would look delicious on this cloth!
Price: £15 plus £2.50 p&p.
* * *
Beautiful Vases of Flowers Tablecloth
Beautiful Vases of Flowers Tablecloth
This beautiful tablecloth has a big vase of flowers in each corner. Exquisitely worked in tiny stem stitch and lazy daisy, this would really give the country cottage look to any home.Worked on white linen with a drawn thread border, this cloth measures 40" square (102 cm) and has been obviously kept for best.
Price: £12.50 plus £3 p&p.
* * *
Sheaf of Flowers Runner
Runner for table or sideboard. This profusely-embroidered piece has a sheaf of flowers as its centrepiece and is the work of a skilled needlewoman as there is not a stitch ill-set on it. The design is continued in sprigs for he width of the runner. Worked on cream linen, it measures 36" (92 cm) long by 11" (28 cm) wide, and has a neat machine-sewn hem. Probably dates from the 1950s or 1960s.
Price: £10.00 plus £2.50 p&p.
* * *
Cutwork centrepiece
This pretty embroidered cutwork table centrepiece would look gorgeous with a jug of flowers or a cake on a stand at its centre, or alternatively to take a pretty dressing able set. Worked on linen, in peach and dark green, it measures 19 1/2" long (50 cm) x 13" (33 cm) wide. Probably dates from the 1950s or 60s.
Price: £5 including postage and packing.
* * *
Beautiful Crinoline lady table runnerHand-embroidered on beige material (can't say exactly what the material is, but it has a slight glazed finish) with a fringe border.
Length 48" including fringe (122 ccm) x 11 3/4" wide (30cm). Crinoline Lady at either end, with two daisy sprigs in the centre. Beautifully worked in the prettiest of colours. 1950s vintage.
Price: £5.50 including postage and packing.
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