Thursday, August 06, 2009

A veritable treasure

Tuesday and Thursday are my 'best' days for raiding the Salvation Army Op Shop because those are the days that Gaye is on the job.
Gaye has sussed out my penchant for ratting through tatty old sheet music in search of suitable pieces to cannibalise for my mixed media efforts, and now she puts likely candidates aside for me. If they are particularly ratty and incomplete ... an odd page here or there ... they cost me the grand sum of 20c or so.

but today was the prize!

There was a small pile of early 2oth century sheet music waiting for me
all clearly of no use to anyone else so I got the lot for 50 cents
and look what I found
an incomplete copy of what is fairly obviously an aussie children's songbook. There's no cover or title page but a wee bit of internet sleuthing has confirmed that what I have is
Annie and Ida Rentoul's More Australian Songs for Young and Old [1913] with Ida's delicate, whimsical black and white illustrations.
You'll really want to click to enlarge these so that you can see the fine detail:
the little koala in the bottom right corner of this one
the possum outside the window in this

The more pedestrian stuff can be hacked up and recycled as art but

all that remains of this wee book is going to be preserved [ and because most of it's already come apart into single sheets, these are so going to be framed! ]

12 comments:

crazyhaberdasher said...

Love it of course! Are you able to scan the music?

catsmum said...

I could definitely do that if you're interested Maz - do you mean scan and send to you ? or scan and post on the blog ?

Alice said...

Fantastic drawings. Makes one want to go and live in the time they were drawn.......for a little while anyway.

What a find!

Anonymous said...

What a lovely find, I never have much luck in opshops for anything, must always be the wrong day.

crazyhaberdasher said...

Hi again, no scan and hold them for me please, thanks!.....I am ~really~ hoping that we get to see you soon!!!

Bernie said...

Oh how lucky were you, I love these pictures and I think they fell into the hands of a wonderful lady....they are exactly where they are suppose to be, enjoy.
Have a great day.....:-) Hugs

ozjane said...

Pretty lovely.........I am sure I have some of Ida's work somewhere. Probably in the chn's lit. collection but have this vague feeling I might have an old diary.
Hope someone sends these to an Op shop one day and not to a skip......but reckon the skip will win.

Alwen said...

Those are beautiful things. Glad they fell into your hands.

Anonymous said...

All I can say is

"WHAT A FIND!"

Jan said...

How lovely. You were in the right place at the right time.

Warty Mammal said...

Oh, wow! That is quite a find, some lovely examples of children's book illustration. I'm envious.

Lynne said...

Wow! A treasure indeed.