Oh, frabjous day!
Yesterday a ‘we missed you’ type card plopped through our letterbox. Despite my being in, and there being a note taped to our front door with my number on it.
Queuing in the drizzle outside the Tesco Metro today wasn’t prepping me for elation, either. Initial anger at the postie not calling yesterday, and me therefore not getting the package, gave way to delight today, when I eventually picked up the mystery item.
Perhaps the delays and inclement weather made the ultimate unwrapping that bit more joyful?
Anyway, a while back I posted the tiniest of posts, here on my blog (it’s actually the previous post, just five days back!), and poss’ also on FB, simply saying that I didst covet the Johnny Trunk/Four Corners book, The Art of Small Films.
Imagine then, if you will, my delight at opening the large card box this came in, to discover that that very book was now in my hands. And with it a cute enamelled Four Corners badge, and a bookmark.
The book itself is a medium/large square-ish art-book style hardback. The textual content is minimal and light: after opening encomiums from Stewart Lee and Sr Trunk, much of the remainder is quotes from Firmin or Postgate, with very small editorial interjections to add context or continuity.
Whilst the stories of Small films and its two chief dynamoes are fascinating in and of themselves, the real attractions here are the images, which capture both the creative processes, the end results of same, and much, much more. Somewhere in the hinterlands of memory and imagination, in the spaces between the text and imagery, the chief appeal is the enchanting whimsy of it all.
Perhaps ironically, that will o’ the wisp like elusive quality, that Postgate and Firmin distilled so well and so often, is built on an endearingly Heath Robinson meets the Wombles practicality: wool, old Meccano, junk and odds and ends, some precious, some throw-away, all combine, with vivid free-flying imagination and grounded practical artistic talent, to create enchanting worlds a great many of will remember with great fondness.
As Lee and Trunk note, gone are the days and the ways that saw this sort of stuff wind up on our TVs. And the world’s the poorer for that. But it’s the richer for their work, and this very handsome celebration of their art.
It took about an hour to read the entire text. But there’s a lifetimes’ worth of fecund imaginings and their shoestring realisation in here. The beautiful images – and interestingly rural England figures more than one might’ve expected – are to be dipped into repeatedly. Whether that be for pure nostalgic indulgence, or in search of inspiration… Treat yourself, lose yourself in the worlds that Small Films created.