Arnon Reisman - A Phillumenist: September 2012

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Pay It Forward - A beautiful movie I saw yesterday on the cabels

Pay It Forward is a 2000 American drama film based on the novel of the same name by Catherine Ryan Hyde. It was directed by Mimi Leder and written by Leslie Dixon. It stars Haley Joel Osment as a boy who launches a good-will movement, Helen Hunt as his single mother, and Kevin Spacey as his social-studies teacher.

And a nice Japanese "Tobacco Match" matchbox made by Daiwa match that I found in my collection, which I have not noticed that it's a "Tobacco Match"

A nice Senryū matchbox that I found in my collection, which I have not noticed that it's a Senryū

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Two Beautifull Japanese labels of liones which I looked for a long time and finally got, with a little help from my friend

Friday, September 21, 2012

Old Japanese Art Nouveau labels

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

A humoristic article about the matchbox labels from Japan in a blog of Alembic Design Consultants

http://www.alembic.co.uk/blog/inspiration/matchbox-labels-from-japan-china/

No Phillumenist I, nor proper collector of anything, but like most graphic designers I love a nice bit of printed ephemera. I bought these matchbox labels in Thailand, and as far as I can tell they are mostly (all?) Japanese, made for the Chinese market and stone lithography printed. I can’t read the text (which might explain much) but the use of flags in some puts them in the second and third decades of the 20th century – beyond that my ignorance is complete, not that that hinders my enjoyment of them. What is going on in the example above for instance? A diminutive husband and wife extending hospitality to an outsized westerner? or two smartly-dressed children welcoming Daddy home (wondering why he could not afford a full-sized house)? Either way – the drawing, pattern, texture and colours are beautiful.

This puzzling kitten-weighing scenario is probably not an illustration to a recipe printed on the other side of the matchbox. The coloured stripes on the weight are those of the flag of the ‘five great races of the Republic of China’ (red = Han, yellow = Manchus, blue = Mongols, white = Huis (Muslims) & Uyghurs, black = Tibetans). The kitten seems to be wearing the star emblem of the Chinese army, so perhaps this is about the new/young army being as powerful as all China – plausible, if dull. I prefer the kitten-cuisine theory. Or perhaps this is simply The Heaviest Kitten in China.

Japanese Senryū labels

The full set

The sad girl who likes yellow candy

Senryū (川柳^?, literally 'river willow') is a Japanese form of short poetry . Senryū tend to be about human weakness. Senryū are often cynical or darkly humorous.

Senryū is named after Edo period haikai poet Senryū Karai (柄井川柳, 1718-1790), whose collection Haifūyanagidaru (誹風柳多留^?) launched the genre into the public consciousness.

Senryū is traditionally written with karumi, lightness. The ability to produce cynical and dark humor or irony out of common things or people, and the ability to laugh at oneself is karumi. (source: Wikipedia)