Showing posts with label 40s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 40s. Show all posts

Tuesday, 23 October 2018

An Invisible Material Force Is At Work



Leonard Rosoman illustrates a vivid account of the new Jive scene in Britain, by author and jazz fan William Sansom.

I've posted the entire article here as I reckon it's well worth a read.  Touches on the wider influence of US popular culture, the reasons for its success etc, as well as the specifics of jive itself.

From the 5th Contact Book: "The Public's Progress", 1947.









Wednesday, 17 October 2018

1947 - The Changing Nation



Hugh Casson.







The Contact Books series was a magazine in disguise.  When they went into production in 1946, there was a ban on new magazines (to preserve paper), so they stuck it in a hardback cover, gave each edition its own title and put the word 'book' on the front.

Fascinating reading for anyone interested in post-war planning, architecture, world afffairs, sociology etc as seen by the broadsheet sophisticat / design set of the time.  There's probably an essay to be written on this lot and their similarities / connections to globalisation, neoliberalism, centrists, Blairites etc etc.  Or maybe not, I dunno; I've probably spent too long on twitter lately.

(Maybe even the whole bake-off, Keep Calm, Middle Class Revolt thing - which we all hate, of course - and the British artists & illustrators of the UK 30s/40s - who we all love, right?   John Minton, Edward Bawden and - I *think* - Edward Ardizzone make appearances in various Contact books).

These scans are from the 7th volume.  Barbara Jones, being snotty about the suburbs in the classical style here, was best known as an illustrator.  She went on to work on - The Woodentops!  The tv series, not the band.

There's a great piece about the history of Contact HERE.