Ribbonesia's Animal Ribbon Art

Is it fairy tale related - yes!

OK, not directly but it feels very fairy tale-y so I had to share. :) I can see these being used in fairy tale productions, in photo shoots and to give fairy tale gifts.

Here's a little info, courtesy of Anthology Magazine:

In 2008, after working for a long time as a painter and illustrator, artist Baku Maeda decided to experiment with ribbon and other soft materials to try to capture the expression and character of various types of animals. Baku continues to create new animals and design variations, and the Ribbonesia creative team now includes six individuals, including the artist. 

No two pieces are exactly alike, and they are all stunning—certainly an reminder of how any material can be made into something remarkable, in the hands of an artist. To see more pieces and learn more about the studio, visit the Ribbonesia blog.

These lovely bows by Japanese company Ribbonesia are so beautifully crafted.. you don't need a gift inside the box!

Here's a closer look at a few. They look really classy here:

It appears they can tackle any form, no matter how complicated. Check out their 2012 Dragon ribbon sculpture:

They have quite a large variety (which isn't immediately obvious when you see the website). Have a look at the displays below:

Apparently sample boxes are available (for stores?) but they would make lovely little treasures on their own.

They're also advertised as being accessories: from unusual hat adornments to lapel pins.

They look lovely as wall art too:

I only wish I could read Japanese to let you know about the originators and artists involved but rather than copy a bad Babelfish translation I'll let you go to the website and have a look for yourself. I can, however, show you a couple of pictures of the talented team:

I also recommend hunting around the various sections of the website to see tons more pictures of ribbon animals, events and the artists at work. I believe they are all handmade (!) and that Ribbonesia is currently looking for interested people to take on the craft and expand the business.

It certainly seems like the business is quickly becoming successful! Check out the fronts and window display of this department (I think) store.

They even have workshops for people to go and learn how to craft various ribbon animals, especially birds (look at the variety below). From what I can gather, it's not an easy task for the average person to reproduce most of the designs.

They're available for purchase HERE.

You can get company and product updates via Twitter for updates too.

My wish list just keeps getting longer and longer...

Originally found via SuperPunch.

Happy Birthday Mr. Dickens!

Google logo honoring Dickens 200th birthday, Feb 7th 2012

I ran out of oomph last night when I saw the google logo appear in honor of Charles Dickens 200th birthday but I couldn't let it pass without at least a mention because, well, Dickens is awesome. Plus a lot of his work grew out of his love of fairy tales.

You probably know this quote:

(Yes you can get it on a t-shirt now.)

 In case the image is too fuzzy to read, I've added the quote below.)

“In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.” 

― Charles Dickens

If you need a refresher, here's a lovely little BBC animation overview of his life:

Heidi at SurLaLune has posted a lot of wonderful posts in honor of Mr. Dicken's today so rather than repeat her I'll just give you an excerpt from her first post then send you over there to read it all:

Today is the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens, a lifelong supporter of fairy tales. So I wanted to devote a few entries to him today in celebration.  

We already know somewhat that Dickens loved Little Red Riding Hood. He once wrote: "Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood I should have known perfect bliss."

But fairy tales informed more of his work, not directly with fairy tale retellings like some of his contemporaries, but he alluded to them frequently and even defended them when he felt it was necessary as some of today's entries will show.

Before you head over and enjoy a good cup of tea while you read through all the awesome posts Heidi has put up today, I want to bring your attention to a few things first:

The first is an article titled Fairy Tales and Adolescence which you can find HERE. It begins by discussing Dickens and his use of fairy tales (emphasis in bold is mine) then goes on from there:

Dickens notes for The Cricket in the Hearth

We were talking about Dickens’ fondness for fairy tale tropes and figures.  In part this involved us simply in identifying fairy tale tropes in the novel, which is fun, though rather limited: Copperfield is a regendered remix of Cindarella, for instance; like Little Red Riding Hood young David must pass through treachorous territory and overcome the vulpine Murdstone, who has dispatched his mother—or else, some in the seminar thought, must negotiate the trickier sexual wolfishness of Steerforth, dressed in friend’s clothing. (Plus, of course, David has a hood: ‘I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale in the newspapers at the low price of fifteen guineas’, ch.1).  Several members of the group pulled out references to ogres and giants, to magical flutes, princesses and castles in the novel.  But we also agreed that simply identifyig fairy tales elements was a pretty one-dimensional response.  

We wanted to go beyond just noticing that,  in the words of Elaine Ostrey, ‘throughout his career, Dickens engaged in fairy tales on every level: he wrote them, defended them, alluded to them and used techniques from the genre in his essays and novels … Dickens defends the imagination and fairy tales in the same breath’ [Elaine Ostrey, Social Dreaming: Dickens and the Fairy Tale, (2002), 1].  So we talked a little about the critical context of this question: there have been various studies of Dickens and Fairy tales (Michael Kotzin’s Dickens and the Fairy Tale (1972) and Harry Stone’s Dickens and the Invisible World: Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Novel Making (1979) are two, for instance—Stone’s being probably the best, despite its limitations).  Stone’s argument, broadly, is that the fairy tale element in Dickens work balances the for-want-of-a-better-word ‘realist’ element; that in his early books he doesn’t get these two rather contrary impulses to line up in a wholly effective way, but with the Christmas Books, Dombey and especially inCopperfield and Great Expectations he squares the circle, and creates realistic fairy-tales, or fairy-told realisms, which in turn generate unique and penetrating new insights, affects, kinds of fiction. 

The whole article is well worth the time to read. You can find Social Dreaming: Dickens and the Fairy Tale HERE, though it's pricey (odd, since it was published in 2002).



One new release is: Charles Dickens: The Dickens Bicentenary 1812-2012  by Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, The Charles Dickens Museum (Contribution by), pictured at right and released in mid-December last year.

Overview
Charles Dickens is the definitive interactive illustrated guide to the man and his works. Produced in association with the Charles Dickens Museum, London, it follows Dickens from early childhood, including his time spent as a child labourer, and looks at how he became the greatest celebrity of his age, and how he still remains one of Britain’s most renowned literary figures, even in the twenty-first century. It is an intimate look at what he was like as a husband, father, friend and employer; at his longing to be an actor, his travels across North America, his year spent living in Italy and his great love of France. It introduces Dickens’s fascinating family and his astonishing circle of friends, and we discover when and how life and real-life personalities were imitated in his art.

Charles Dickens was an intriguing personality. He was a man far ahead of his time, a Victorian whose ideals and outlook on life were better suited to the modern world. With beautiful photographs and artworks, and many never before seen facsimile documents from Dickens’s own archives, Charles Dickens brings to life this extraordinary and complex man, whose name remains internationally revered and whose work continues to inspire us today.

Another new release is for children (and grownups of course!): A Boy Called Dickens by Deborah Hopkinson (Author), John Hendrix (Illustrator), pictured at left and released January 10th this year.

Description 

For years Dickens kept the story of his own childhood a secret. Yet it is a story worth telling. For it helps us remember how much we all might lose when a child's dreams don't come true . . .  

As a child, Dickens was forced to live on his own and work long hours in a rat-infested blacking factory. Readers will be drawn into the winding streets of London, where they will learn how Dickens got the inspiration for many of his characters. The 200th anniversary of Dickens's birth is February 7, 2012, and this tale of his little-known boyhood is the perfect way to introduce kids to the great author. Here is historical fiction at its ingenious best.

There's a really nice preview on the illustrator's website HERE.

And finally here is a slightly older book, published 2006, titled Once Upon Charles Dickens by Laura Jennifer Szkutak, pictured on the right.

From the authors website HERE:

At the heart of Charles Dickens' creative vision in his works is the formative influence of fairy tales that entered Dickens' imagination from his early childhood and later gave shape to his fiction. Dickens' exposure to and awareness of fairy tale literature gave him a basis for the various formulas his books follow, many of which run parallel to basic fairy tale plots. 

The book traces through Dickens' childhood and adult life focusing on three of the novels that helped shape his career:Oliver Twist, Hard Times, and Great Expectations.  The book tells of Dickens' early obsession with fairy tale literature, and shows the connection between the original fairy tales of Charles Perrault and Madame D'Aulnoy and later, the Brothers Grimm, to the themes of Dickensian literature.  Hans Christian Anderson, a close friend and guest of the Dickens' family was of particular interest to Charles' work in defending the value of fairy tales, which, at one time, were actually banned from England.  The book delves into the well-publicized split between Dickens and one of his illustrators George Cruikshank, when, in 1853, as Elaine Ostry states, "The fairy tale drove the last nail into a longstanding friendship." 

Once Upon Charles Dickens also contains a psychoanalytic analysis of the methodology of the common fairy tale in relieving the subconscious manifestations of societal fears.  The reader will see how Dickens used fairy tales themes in his novels in much the same respect, by taking everyday people and telling their story in a way that makes them extraordinary.

And now go read Heidi Anne Heiner's SurLaLune entries HERE. She's really pulled out all the stops today! They're not yet tagged with "Dickens" so if the link fails you type "Dickens" in the search window and they should all come up, with today's 200th birthday ones being at the top.)

Happy 200th Mr. Dickens!

The Last Selchie Child by Jane Yolen

Coming soon! OK - soon-ish, in May. (I'm always excited about Jane Yolen releases. :) And it has selkies - or in this case selchies.

Magical transformations, enchanted mirrors, talking animals, familiar tales in unfamiliar guises, all these and more are found in the pages of The Last Selchie Child. 

Retellings of archetypal myths and fairy tales and the nature of storytelling itself are explored in this new collection of poems by Jane Yolen.

If you're not really a poetry fan but love fairy tales I suggest you at least give Ms. Yolen's poetry a try.

Here's an excerpt from one of the works in the book title The Storyteller:

He unpacks his bag of taleswith fingers quickas a weaver's            picking the weft threads,            threading the warp.Watch his fingers.Watch his lipsspeaking the old familiar words:

And HERE's another, older one which has stayed with me ever since I read it on the Endicott Studio website. It's titled Beauty and the Beast: An Anniversary.

Another I love is Undine which you can read HERE and you can check the Endicott Studio poetry archive for even more fairy tale poetry, including quite a few by Ms. Yolen. 


As far as I can tell, Ms. Yolen's fairy tale poetry is scattered across publications and various books, so I'm thankful Endicott Studio has been able to post some of her works so we can read them there. There's a good chance they otherwise might be lost (at least to most of us) in out of print/unavailable publications. I'd snap up a fairy tale poetry volume containing all these gems by Ms. Yolen in a second if it were available. For now we are to be treated with new fairy tale works instead. (Selkies!) That's a very good and happy thing.

And if the idea of reading about selchies/selkies appeals but you'd rather a novel, she has one of those too. It's titled Greyling and I most definitely recommend it. Though it's out of print you can still find copies without too much difficulty.

The Last Selchie Child will be available on May 15 and is available now for pre-order HERE and HERE.

Interview: Flyway Talks To Kate Bernheimer

One of the things I love about Kate Bernheimer is that, when she speaks at conventions or is interviewed online she's so down to earth and accessible. For someone who is both an accomplished academic and writes and works with very literary pieces and people, she's obviously kept her feet on the ground and knows, not only how to speak at a level most people can understand (without referring to a dictionary or feeling like they missed a number of key university courses) but she talks about fairy tales - and their study - in the same way. 

From the interview:

KB: Fairy tales save people in all sorts of ways: it’s no accident Anne Frank wrote fairy tales. Historically a lot of authors say they first fell in love with reading through fairy-tale books.  The journal was established, quite simply, to give an open home to fairy tales and to preserve them for future generations of readers. It has never been about “silver coins,” though it takes some money to do this.  With a little fairy-tale luck the work will continue.

I was very interested to learn about her Fairy Tale Book Depository as I've been wondering what would happen to my own not-small collection of fairy tale books that I've very deliberately hunted down over many years. I know the collection may not be of much monetary value (as far as valuable book collections go) but it's an excellent and fairly unique library for anyone interested in fairy tales. I can't bear the thought that it might end up split between charity boxes or used for (gulp!) kindergarten papier maché projects. While I know my loved ones value them because of what they mean to me, once I'm gone they're just going to be annoying dust collectors (unless there's a late-blooming fairy tale student in the family). I'd much rather I was able to bequeath them to someone who's developed a passion for fairy and folk tales as I have. Perhaps Ms. Bernheimer's Fairy Tale Book Depository is the first step to making something like that available. (As soon as it is, I'll be revising my will!)

Illustration of Kate by Victoria Advocate

LM: Tell me a little bit about your new program, “Fairy Tale Book Repository”. Where did you get the idea? Can you give me a summary of the “long range plan” your website mentions, or is it a secret? 

KB: I got the idea to establish a Fairy-Tale Book Repository over many years of finding discarded fairy-tale books at garage sales, thrift shops, or (along with other sad characters) in cartons on the sidewalk intended for garbage. I was frequently receiving new and used fairy-tale books in the mail from acquaintances, friends, and complete strangers who just thought I might like them. My shelves had become a sort of informal safe haven for fairy-tale books—an unofficial Island of Misfit Fairy-Tale Books.  So I decided to make it official and posted an announcement on the Fairy Tale Review website. So far The Fairy-Tale Book Repository exists in my study, my closets, my attic, and some boxes in the garage. I would love to give the books a more public home someday too, and I share these whenever I can. Anyone who knows me knows it is hard to leave my house or office without an armload of recommended fairy-tale reading.
Part of Fairy Tale Review’s mission is to “preserve” fairy tales of all kinds (more like preserving a delicious jam than some fragile artifact).  This is one of the ways.  I’m working on cataloguing the books and writing up descriptions of their contents and how they made their way to the Repository. Plans are not “secret” at all.  The Fairy-Tale Book Repository has been slow to venture from its current domestic space, but one day it will.

Author card from Powell's Books for The Complete Tales of Merry Gold

The main topic of conversation however, revolves around her wonderful independent journal Fairy Tale Review and the struggle to have fairy tale works recognized as legitimate literature. 

While I applaud the effort, agree in principle and support the incredible talent, persistence, scholarly skill and amazing research efforts by all fairy tale scholars and writers, I think the fact that fairy tales are still considered "common man material" is actually in our favor. Please understand, I do not mean to minimize any efforts or scholarship in the pursuit of fairy tale study, meaning, history, revival or writing newly inspired works. I just know I would not have felt it a worthy pursuit to study them outside of academia if they were regarded as Literature (with a capital "L"). But I have and I do and it's enriched my life. It's also bridged gaps to "big-L literature" for me as a result as well. Yes: my personal study of fairy tales has often given me an instinctual understanding of "greater works" in a way that's surprised people. It's not that I'm particularly smart. I've just read - and keep reading - fairy tales and anything related. Ms. Bernheimer herself paraphrases Einstein at the end of the interview with something I heard early and use as almost a mantra:

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
― Albert Einstein

I believe this is true and support every effort Ms. Bernheimer is making in ensuring they are readily available in multiple forms for generations of children to come.

Flyway's interview with Kate Bernheimer can be found HERE and the most recent issue (the brown issue) of Fairy Tale Review is HERE.

Dance Theater: Company XIV presents Snow White

I saw these videos for the first time recently and though the show is well past, I thought they would still be of much interest to fairy tale people - especially so that you can keep an eye out in case they produce this show again (which, likely they will, with it selling out).

The company is called Company XIV and they are a multi-media, multi-disciplinary performance dance-theater group. (I'm sure there's a neater way of saying that but this way you get the idea of what's involved.)

Company XIVs version of Snow White is a baroque infused show for all ages inspired by the Brothers Grimm version of the fairy tale. Just in time for the holiday season, the lavish production features opera, dance, puppetry and fun for the entire family. The baroque opera trio Charities joins the cast, providing haunting and beautiful arias by Handel and Bellini as well as Yiddish folk songs and original compositions. Appropriate for all ages.

Here are two trailers, which I believe are from their most recent production that finished showing in January this year. The videos were uploaded a month ago. (I apologize for using Vimeo for those who have trouble with it. These don't seem to be available on YouTube):

Snow White Teaser from Company XIV on Vimeo.

SNOW WHITE LIVE REEL from Company XIV on Vimeo.

THIS SHOW FOR THE ENTIRE FAMILY BLENDS OPERA, CIRCUS, DANCE, THEATRE, PROJECTION, & LAVISH DESIGN THAT IS SURE TO DELIGHT CHILDREN & ADULTS ALIKE. 

Choreographed,conceived,& directed by AUSTIN McCORMICK 

“Austin McCormick’s company are an accomplished, versatile ensemble with serious circus, dance and singing skills.”– The Herald (UK)

Here's another trailer from YouTube, which, although different and from 2009 and appears to be a slightly different version (I think the image above is the poster for it) still gives you a good idea of the type of performance and production it is.


From their website, which helps shed a little more light on the sort of show it is:

Company XIV presents a re-imagining of their critically acclaimed sold out hit for the entire family inspired by the brothers Grimm fairytale: SNOW WHITE.

“How can a theatrical approach be both resolutely traditional and irreverently avant-garde? The border between those extremes is exactly where Company XIV dances — sometimes en pointe, sometimes with folk-infused boot stomps — in its fascinating new ”Snow White.”
–The New York Times

“McCormick’s imaginative work ignores boundaries between various theatrical, musical, and choreographic genres and ventures boldly into myriad aesthetic territories….saucy and stylish avant-garde musical theater at its finest.”

– Back Stage NY

“Austin McCormick has manipulated the sugary sweet tale of benevolent dwarfs, innocence and true love into a vibrant tale that has intrigue, nuance, and titillating double entendre, while still remaining a dance/theatre work that parents can take their children to.”
–Stage and Cinema

This is exactly the type of theater I expected to be involved with today (had I not made a detour into animation). I wish I could have seen it live.