mili's blog
It's funny how the letters that make up words can look like people
In Ali Smith's first novel, Like, there is a chapter where a 7-year-old girl is reading a book called "One Hundred And One Great Wonders Of The World". It's rare to have descriptions of letters or fonts in fiction, so I enjoyed these little observations:
Earrings for those who like letters
I got these nice copper earrings for Christmas. They are by a Russian jewellery artist Nikolai Balabin, who lives in FInland. Apparently he presses old metal letters in sand.
Sunday walks, house numbers and more
Some pictures taken within 6 km radius from my home during Sunday walks this autumn.
This has a light inside in the evenings:
The new style of Helsinki street signs (this one is worn out)
and the old style
A day care center:
And then something totally different
And one more, but I took a bus there yesterday
Clutterbuck of Utley
This fine sign has been up for at least 50 years. The former clothes shop in Yorkshire hasn't been open for some 25 years, but the sign is still there for some reason. I believe I photographed it in the nick of time, as the space behind the facade is empty now.
Venice type
I spent some time in Venice this Summer, and found some interesting type here and there.
We stayed in the hotel Bologna in Mestre, which had some type dotted about:
the bathroom window (or half of them):
this was on the corridor wall:
Nice Wine
…and nice label. It must be hand lettered. Unfortunately it was glued so hard it didn't want to come off the bottle, so I scanned the bottle.
1930's Ex Libris
I found this Ex Libris in a book I bought from a high quality second hand bookshop in Helsinki. It's in an apparently second edition J. B. Priestley's Angel Pavement from 1930, published by William Heinemann Ltd, London. It was obviously purchased by Mr. Starck in 1932, and it was no. 604 in his library.
Mr. Starck seemed to have been Karelia minded, as the two swords suggest – eastern and western. The same theme is in a label of a popular Finnish beer, Karjala (Karelia).
Karelia is in the border of Finland and Russia, in 1930 it was still totally in Finland, now part of it belongs to Russia.
The K in Starck is pretty interesting as well as the Ö without proper umlauts.
Domus Pompeiana
I went to this Pompeji exhibition in Helsinki today. The font used, Apollonia, was specially designed by Anna Väänänen for the event as part of a school project (schools were involved with putting up the exhibition). Just thought I'd share it with you.
