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I've been wanting to write something about my mum, who died without warning in June (a fortnight after the boy's arrival), but I figured a gift illustrator's blog wasn't the best forum for unchecked grief and the raw pain of loss. Profoundly felt emotions may seem vulgar when expressed and I worried that, once begun, I'd not want to to stop. Healthy for me perhaps, but awkward for everybody else.

So, more simply, I'd post a few photos of her antics and more outré outfits over the decades (especially the 1980s, my mum's middle age was an absolute renaissance) but I suspect —as an awe-struck son— I'd make a too subjective selection right now. Maybe next year.

Then, last week I noticed 'August Bank Holiday 1957' written on the back of a b/w snap of the folks. 55 years ago today. At the end of her eighteenth summer, believe me, this girl was just getting started.

• Rita Joyce Underwood, 1938-2012

50 Years

No need for anniversaries, back at our yard we celebrate Jamaican independence constantly; like this, this, this, this, this, this or even this.

The Well-Tempered Garden

With the UK seasons seeming to switch daily, we were grateful for a clement couple of hours in a Sussex garden. Great Dixter is pretty much the life's work of the hugely influential horticulturist, Christopher Lloyd, whose riotous and ramshackle ethic is aptly illustrated in mixed herbaceous borders.

Nothing at Dixter is planned on paper but rather intuited annually by Lloyd's successor Fergus Garrett and a team of eager gardeners (with a few languorous cats)... none of whom seemed to mind my ploughing a pram through the place. There's a bit of a doggy theme with a wonderful mosaic of two top-to-toe dachshunds in the walled garden, continuing inside with a collection of sausage dogs; from one-off sculptures to the Slinky tie-in from Toy Story. While the medieval house also holds a fair few ceramics and heap of great rugs, it was the proportions of the vegetable beds outside that truly earned my envy.

Un/fortunately, Great Dixter has an exemplary nursery too, meaning a trip may cost more dearly than entrance fee alone. Binomial Latin usually sounds a bit rude to me, but —for those of you who understand this stuff— here's my shopping list:

Cyperus vegetus
Seslaria nitida
Erigeron karvinskianus
Euphorbia stygiana
Cynara cardunculus (dwarf)
Forniculum vulgare Purpureu
Macleaya m. Kelways Coral Plume

N.B. Post title taken from Lloyd's 1970 book, itself a skit on J.S.Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, the preludes and fugues that eccentric pianist, Glenn Gould, so famously interpreted. Even if you hate Baroque music, it's always good to watch him in action... I swear he thought in algebra and algorithms!

Since its unveiling a few years back, designers have done such a good job of shoehorning 2012's awkward logo into layouts that I've actually grown to like it. I also like the idea behind the Olympic mascots, it's just that Wenlock & Mandeville have a shared look of shame in their one big eye; as though they know they're next month's charity shop stock.



That brand of in-built obsolescence puts me in mind of a million other misfired advertising opportunities, designed by committee and deeply patronising, from graffiti logos to 'totally wicked' Weetabix characters. I'm old enough to remember too many Olympic mascots, some cute and others so-so, but my favourite's still 1992's Cobi, the cubist sheepdog from playful post-modern designer Javier Mariscal.

• Chris Marker, 1921-2012 (La Jetée, 1962)

No need to miss London last week as London came to us... well, for an evening at least. Rob Ryan has a show at the beautiful Charleston country house and was ferrying friends and family by the coach-load for the preview, so we headed down too. One of us drank milk, one of us drank juice, and the other had too much gin. As for the show, it's as you'd expect; brilliant.

Even if you feel you've seen a lot of of Rob's style recently (appropriated everywhere by big business), you'll reminded of his ceaseless creativity, innate decorative hand, touching aphorisms and disarming sincerity. If you're searching the area for inspiration this summer, then a visit to Charleston is essential... gin entirely optional.

• Maybe pick up your copy of SPQR (pictured) while you're there too

Wiggins Wins!

Hip-hip-hooray for Bradley Wiggins... could there be a better name for a Brit cycle champ? Don't know why I've decided to celebrate with such a clunky/low-tech pic though; it's actually the conceptual prototype for an innovative folding commuter bike and one million mountainous miles away from the grueling Tour de France!

It's odd that Wedgwood celebrated space-age achievement (on this day, 1969) in the cameo/sprig style called Jasperware, I thought it was a knowing joke when I saw it on a friend's kitchen shelf.

Flip-Side

Fittingly, the BBC's been playing a glut of Woody Guthrie this weekend as America celebrates the centenary of its C20th folk hero. In mapping the movement of music from Europe (and beyond), something about early Americana puts me in mind of Hobo Nickels, those wonderful examples of Outsider Art. Altered by itinerant workers, railroad drifters, the disenfranchised and dispossessed, Hobo Nickels usurp the totemic symbols of the nascent US, replacing them with a counter-currency of personalised, painstaking, or puerile meaning. I'd love to make my own but modern coins are too tough for tooling!

• Visit Cabinet Magazine for full photo credits and excellent accompanying article

Particulars

Our collective understanding of matter may well have altered with the observation of the Higgs boson field at CERN earlier this week, but even physicists need a piping-hot beverage to accelerate their particles now and again! Luckily our two new designs, Jungle Lion and Crocodile, arrived as samples yesterday. They're perfect... even the reprints of the other six guys (here and here) look better and brighter via the new supplier.

Fingers & Thumbs

Our crappy studio sprang a leak during the UK's last soggy fortnight. While shifting stuff out of harm's way we rediscovered a nice poster and a naïve etching. Edward spent a sweary day framing them up (don't mention the huge gap at the foot of the black one). The poster's not just gobbledegook (or double-dutch) though, if you've not heard her, Yma Sumac was a loopy sounding Peruvian soprano associated with the exotica movement.

Chances are you'll have already read an obituary or two on the wonderful painter Mary Fedden (1915-2012) this week, but it's always nice to post a few pictures... even though I've inadvertently made the gloomiest selection!

Though I love the name Ira, we'd pretty much settled on Eli for the kid... a pity then that Chris Evans nabbed it so publicly last week. He gets called Meatloaf or Frazzle-Face right now, but I think we're pitching for Orson; it sounds a bit like 'Our Son', teams well with Underwood, and —even better— means bear-like. Trouble is, everybody says 'Like Orson Welles?'... whose real name was George.

 

There's a few other Orsons though; the feral original from a 14th century tale Valentine & Orson (pictured here in a 1566 street theatre study from Bruegel), or the intense looking phrenologist, Orson Squire Fowler, advocator of social reform and octagonal houses. With all this quick Wikipedia knowledge, I should apply for a job as a research assistant!

• model-maker's pic from the amazing smallhousepress

• Incendiary still from Jordan's Dance, 1977, which forms part of Derek Jarman's Jubilee and is reprised this week for a timely screening on The Mall at the ICA.

From the Corner...

What with last week's dual role as hospital patient/jittery new parents, we completely missed the preview of From the Corner of Your Eye to the Corner of the Room and Back Again, the new show from an old friend, Tom Gidley. There's another of Paradise Row's artisits, Barry Reigate, who Edward's known since they were 11... you can take it from me, that's a very long time!

25.5.12 - 30.6.12, Paradise Row Gallery, 74a Newman Street, London W1T 3DB

Ouch!

I know childbirth's not exactly a rare biological phenomenon, so I'll try not to prattle on; suffice it to say we had a boy. All humility aside, at 9lb 13oz (4440g) I deserve a giant medal. The nurse for the 3-month scan wrote the gender on a scrap of paper and stapled it shut. The urge to look was strong for the first few days but soon wore off. Her '98% certain' proved 100% correct. Now, to discover his name.

Joop Zoetemelk trains with his wife, Francoise. In 1980 Joop won the Tour de France on a TI Raleigh frame designed by Alan Oakley (1927-2012)

RSI

Out of the studio this week is an 30x40cm print version of the Splashing Whale (one of our earliest surviving card designs) and a monotone version of a house print. We've done limited runs of a house print in the past but mixing three tones of ink with any true precision is tough, the middle shade is never exactly betwixt light and dark, and what works in the pot may not work on paper. Here the tones rely fully on pattern and texture. Signing 100 prints apiece makes my faltering fingers feel funny.

 

Our Love

Donna Summer (1948-2012) featured on a handful of popular culture's finest moments, for sure, but that AIDS-as-punishment-from-God controversy was a real stinker and no mistake. Here's the only link I can find to 1979's Our Love, a track not really cited in today's obituaries though I love the Acid touches at the end/drum pattern on the chorus... and so did New Order! The images are Gran Fury's late 80s agitprop for ACT UP, to whom she later apologised.

Whoa!

I know this sight's almost obscene, but I'm 38 weeks pregnant and Edward's wardrobe is really coming into its own; care worn t-shirts for sleeping and oversized shirts in the day. Luckily I've avoided those pleated cap-sleeved jersey numbers (with the curious floaty empire-line) and stuck to sack-like dresses like a penance. The Earth rumbles and cups of liquid ripple when I approach, I'm pretty sure I'll not be sneaking up on anyone anytime soon.