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2010-04-20T19:25:00.001+01:00

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City Slet 04

2010-03-16T13:55:00.006Z

You are invited to join City Slet 04

11.30am-12.45pm
Sunday 28 March 2010

Meet outside St Andrews Church, Holborn Circus
Nearest tube: Farringdon

City Slet 04 is the fourth in a series of architecture and exercise trails
in London's square mile. Documentation from City Slet 01-03 can be found on a new blog dedicated to the Slet project - http://sletsite.blogspot.com/

Please be advised this exercise trail is for adults of moderate fitness as
we will jog between architectural sites. The trail will end at Temple.

Free but booking essential
Please RSVP to info@oopps.org

The Thing in the Library

2010-02-25T17:07:00.005Z

Caption: Against The Wind
Canadian star Robert Beatty with the French actress Simone Signoret in an unusual setting from the film of Anglo-Belgian resistance. Charles Crichton directed.

Michael Balcon's 25 Years in Films
Ed: M. Danischewsky
World Flim Publications Ltd
London 1947

Library Fashion

2010-02-25T16:47:00.014Z

Caption: The Boatneck Pullovers shown opposite get their distinction from 'Swedish Weave' stripes which are made by weaving in yarn as you knit.

McCall's Needlework in Colour
Hamlyn
London 1972

The first in a series of images of libraries from my collection of oop books.

City Slet 03

2010-02-09T22:12:00.003Z

You are invited to join City Slet 03

11.30am -12.45pm
Sunday 21 February 2009

Meet at Barbican Centre
Just inside Silk Street entrance
Nearest tube: Moorgate (Barbican is likely to be closed, check tfl.com
before traveling)

City Slet 03 is the third in a series of architecture and exercise trails
in London's square mile. Documentation from City Slet 01 & 02 can be found on a new blog dedicated to the Slet project - http://sletsite.blogspot.com/

Please be advised this exercise trail is for adults of moderate fitness as
we will jog between architectural sites. The trail will end near St Pauls.

Free but booking essential
Please RSVP to info@oopps.org

Chapel Strength

2010-01-31T18:04:00.017Z

While visiting my grandma in Hove I discovered The Gospel Standard Baptist Library in an outhouse in the grounds of her home, Bethesda - a fantastic resource of Baptist tracts and theological books. It's a very well-kept lending library for members of the Strict Baptist denomination and organised with good old fashioned card cataloging.

Residents of Bethesda are also blessed with daily sermons piped in from Brighton, which is then broadcast into their rooms via the apparatus below at 'chapel strength.'

Vulcan Dog

2010-01-12T09:50:00.027Z

The First Book of Vulcan Dog
Stewart Cowley
Attic Press
London 1971

Spotted in Lewisham Library January sale. Is this a rare early title by the science fiction author of the Terran Trade Authority Handbook series? I think it's likely but I have found no confirmation of this from my initial research. Now the hunt for The Second Book commences...

Drowned in Snow

2009-12-27T14:35:00.010Z

Look at Norway
Ed: Yngve Woxholth
Norsk Kustforlag
Oslo, Norway circa. 1960

Caption: Girl playing with a bear near Nystuen

Caption: Corn with spikes stiffend by radioactive rays

Caption: The radioactivity being measured

Caption: Skiing to school in darkness

Caption: Defence problem: Communication, the railway to Bergen drowned in snow

A Green Yule

2009-12-15T09:55:00.010Z

A Dictionary of Lowland Scotch
Charles Mackay, LL.D,
Whittaker and Co
London 1888

This title was spotted by a friend in a charity shop on Clapham High Street. A wonderful find! Includes handwritten notations by a previous owner, a resident of Edinburgh in 1890, who has added definitions of Scotch words Mackay seems to have left out. High percentage of words are linked to drinking, several terms for favourite cows but I found a few relating to my theme for the month - the weather.

Ourie or oorie, cold, shivering.
This word, peculiar to Scotland, is derived from the Gaelic fuar, cold, which, with the aspirate, becomes fhuar, and is pronounced uar.

I thought me on the ourie cattle.
-Burns: A Winter Night.

The English, hoar-frost, and hoary (white, showy) hair of old age, are traceable to teh same etymological root. Jamieson, however, derives oorie from the Icelandic ur, rain, and the Swedish ur, stormy weather, through the origin of both is to be found in the Gaelic uaire, bad weather or storm.

Uppil, to clear up; applied to the weather.

When the weather at any time has been wet, and ceases to be so , we say it is uppled.
-Jamieson.

From the Teutonic aufhellen - auf, up; hellen, to become clear, to clear up.

'A green yule makes a fat kirk-yard' - one of the many Scottish proverbs at the back of the book.

And my favourite drinking term:
Ultimus eekibus, the very last glass of whisky toddy, or eke, one drop more at a convivial gathering before parting for the night: the last of the ekes.

Snow White's Coffin

2009-12-05T22:54:00.004Z

Feeling a bit guilty today because I missed The Big Wave, climate crisis demo. Instead I went to the Fashion and Textile Museum to see Czech designer Jacqueline Croag who was a huge influence on Festival of Britain designs. Particularly like the book print textile. Even had vintage fashion books in the shop but a bit pricey.
Then on to the Design Museum to see Dieter Rams - Less is Better - great exhibition of his work with Braun including a few cool OOP manuals and brochures. Liked the video interview where he talks about how his competitors labelled his revolutionary stereo with a glass lid - 'Snow White's Coffin.'

The Long Rain

2009-12-01T19:43:00.006Z

The Illustrated Man
Ray Bradbury
Rupert Hart-Davis
London 1962

'The rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors and shaved the grass and tunnelled the soil and moulted the bushes. It shrank men's hands into the hands of wrinkled apes; it rained a solid glassy rain, and it never stopped.'

Excerpt from The Long Rain

Not strictly an OOP book but I particularly liked this collection of short stories found in a fourth edition The Illustrated Man from Lewisham Libraries stack.

A Ton of Mud for Every Inhabitant

2009-12-01T17:27:00.010Z

The recent floods in Cumbria reminded me of this OOP title:

Florence: The Days of the Flood
Franco Nincini
Allen & Unwin Ltd
1967

A shocking photographic document of when the river Arno burst its banks in 1966. Much of Florence was flooded under several metres of river water with many lives lost. The aftermath left the city covered in tons of mud, oil and debris - a ton of mud for every inhabitant. 5,000 were homeless with food shortages, 6,000 shops out of business and 1,300,000 rare books and manuscripts in the Bibliteca Nazionale and 1,400 works of art were damaged.

There are moving accounts - citizens giving shelter to prisoners who had had to escape the flood over the rooftops, of a curator who risked her life to save Galileo's telescope, of monks who spent days going through the mud to recover minute fragments of colour washed from a Cimabue crucifixion and of tragic attempts to survive on upturned tabletop rafts.

At the back of the book are similar accounts - taken from extracts of OOP chronicles of previous historic floods from 1269 to 1844.

With one eye on the Copenhagen Climate Summit, OoPPs blog will dwell on all things climatic in December.

Bookmongers

2009-11-17T11:15:00.009Z

Weekend visit to one of my favourite OOP bookshops - Bookmongers on Coldharbour Lane. The photograph of the shop is from the receipt/postcard I was given. It still looks exactly the same - all books are very reasonably priced, rare books behind the counter and bargain books for 50pence at back of the shop.

I fell for this OOP museum catalogue. Loved the cover and title. Inside are wonderful images of 1930s spoons, terrines, art deco vases (particularly liked the vase with image of woman blowing trumpet at another woman's back) and furniture of that period.

Museum: Brohan-Museum Berlin
Karl H. Brohan, Rosewith Braig, Dieter Hogermann
Westermann
1984

Goethe Speaks from the Other Side

2009-10-31T17:30:00.005Z

A book to accompany our Halloween supper:

Breakthrough: An Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead
Konstantin Raudive
Colin Smythe
1971

A summary of six years research by scientist Konstantin Raudive who has documented the speech of dead people. The communications are captured on playbacks of recordings - at the time of recording no audible voices were heard. The voices state their names (among them Goethe, Tolstoy, Nietzsche and Hitler) and talk at a much faster speed than normal and in very short sentences. Jung doesn't seem to make much sense from the Other Side: 'We are here, good day.' 'You belong probably to the cucumbers.' 'Koste, here is Jung. Telephone with restraint, comrade.'

City Slet 01

2009-10-24T17:47:00.003+01:00

You are invited to join City Slet 01

11.30am -12.30pm
Sunday 8 November 2009

Start: Postman's Park
King Edward Street
London EC1A
Nearest tube: St. Pauls

City Slet 01 is the first of a series of architecture and exercise trails in
London's square mile. City Slet trail guides will also be available to download in
2010.

Please be advised this exercise trail is for adults of moderate fitness as we will
jog between architectural sites. The trail will end at the Barbican Centre.
Free but booking essential as places are limited
Please RSVP to info@oopps.org

The Artist Sven Erixson

2009-09-29T18:21:00.005+01:00

The Swedish season continues...

Sweden Today
Algard, Goran - Rommell, Roland
Gebers
Stockholm 1965

Caption:
'The artist Sven Erixson in his Stockholm studion.
"The X" is one of the figures in modern Swedish painting who reveal a lively temperament. Using sparkling colours, spontaneously and without inhibiitions, he creates works that are very much his own. The freedom with which he expresses himself and, equally his strong artistic ambition, are best caught in his own words: "Art that cannot express itself is nonsense, and art that can only express itself is equally nonsense."

The Cursive Scandinavian Salve

2009-09-27T14:30:00.008+01:00

Visited the London Art Book Fair at Whitechapel gallery yesterday. I particularly liked a series of reprints of Great Bear Pamphlets. This is a fine example:

The Cursive Scandinavian Salve
Af Klintberb, Bengt
Something Else Press (original publisher)
New York 1967

Bengt af Klintberg was a Swedish poet and folklorist who conducted Happenings such as Orangermusik 1963 - a piece for buckets, wooden boxes, lettuce and carbonic-acid snow tube (no idea what one of them is!) and the following:

Lettuce Music (for Slet Hanson)
(Premiered march 28th, 1963, in Oslo by Sten Hanson and the author.)

The piece requires two performers, a head of lettuce on a music rack, a whistle and a small charge of explosive.
Short signals on whilstle.
Head of lettuce explodes:
A green rain. Long signal on whistle.

Pamphlet also includes Swedish folklore riddles:

The Bear
Blueberryeater
and lingberryshitter,
God's word's flouter
and poor-man's old-cow-slaughter.

The Nettles
Ten gray hags
stand outside the door.
If you lift their skirts
you get fire on your hands.

Reprinted by Primary Information
Interesting publisher - reprints of many 60s event manifestos and plans for Happenings
Check them out at http://primaryinformation.org

More Swedish Style

2009-09-24T11:23:00.006+01:00

Swedish Embroidery
ed. Fisher, Eivor
B. T. Batsford
London 1953

Swedish Style

2009-09-22T15:17:00.003+01:00

Some more photos from Slet for Hepworth, Walthamstow Town Hall.

You can just see several of the five sculptures carved for the rear of the building that represent Fellowship, Motherhood, Education, Work and Recreation.

Pevsner wrote about the town hall '...stone-faced and in the Swedish style of c.1925 which became so popular in England amongst those who were not satisfied to be imitatively Neo-Georgian nor wanted to go modern in earnest.'

Thank you to Sam Brown for photography.

Fellowship is Life

2009-09-19T09:31:00.004+01:00

A few photos from two days of Slet for Hepworth activities in Chestnut Fields to celebrate the architecture of Walthamstow town hall. The carved text 'Fellowship is life and the lack of fellowship is death' is on the Assembly Hall next to the town hall.

Some more photos and video clip to follow shortly...

Slet for Hepworth

2009-08-27T11:15:00.009+01:00

You are invited to take part in Slet for Hepworth

Join us for flag and badge making with Scribble and Smudge before performing group exercises dedicated to PD Hepworth, the architect of Walthamstow’s wonderful town hall

Thursday 10 September 2009
Drop-in art workshop 10am - 5pm
Exercise workshops for under 5s
10.30 - 10.50am
12 - 12.20pm
2.00 - 2.20pm
4.30 - 4.50pm for all ages

Saturday 12 September 2009
Drop-in art workshop 10am – 2.30pm
Exercise sessions for all ages
10.30 - 11am with Walthamstow Scouts
12.30 - 1pm
2 - 2.30pm

Where: Chestnut Field, behind Walthamstow Town Hall, Forest Road, Waltham Forest, London, E17
Transport: Walthamstow Central Underground/Train, then Bus 275 or 15 mins by foot
Free, no booking required
Please wear clothes and footwear suitable for exercise

Slet for Hepworth is part of E17 Art Trail and funded by O-Regen

For more information
m:07905 964825
www.oopps.org
www.scribbleandsmudge.com
www.e17arttrail.co.uk

Partner-Work

2009-08-11T11:13:00.005+01:00

Cover and plates from OOP book Gymnastic Partner-Work mentioned in previous blog:

Sletting in Tooting

2009-08-09T16:55:00.007+01:00

Thank you to everyone who joined our Slet for Marten and then swam with us in Tooting Bec Lido. New Slet moves were demonstrated by Felicity - The Albatross and The Sparrow. OOP keep-fit books we browsed poolside inspired Fred and friend to replicate some of the exercises found in:

Gymnastic Partner-work
McDowell, Thomas
OUP
London 1937

Slet for Marten

2009-08-06T09:21:00.003+01:00

An invitation to join our summer slet-swim event
Slet for Marten

9.30am Saturday 8 August 2009
Tooting Bec Lido
Tooting Bec Road
London SW16 1RU

Join us for group warm-up exercises followed by a bracing swim in one of the largest open air pools in Europe, designed by Wandsworth borough surveyor HJ Marten and built in 1906

Meet in the park in front of the new main entrance to the pool
Wear comfortable clothing/footwear for exercise and don't forget your swimsuits!
Free to join the slet
£4.75 adult swim (£3.15 child/concession)

Transport: Bus - 155, 249, 319, 355; Tube - Tooting Bec, Balham; Rail - Balham
M:07905 964825

The Crow-like One

2009-03-09T18:52:00.003Z

Thank you to everyone who came along to the slets at the Barbican Centre. The events were dedicated to Le Corbusier, who would exercise for 45 minutes every morning to prepare his body and mind for work. Le Corbusier means 'the crow or crow-like one' - a nice link to our exercises, all named after species of bird.