Pixies & Sprites

All set-up at Holt Sunday Market, down by The Feathers

Here till 3 so pop down, it’s a lovely market with a great selection of stalls 🥰

We love the treasure hunt part of our business; seeking out & trying to solve the puzzles of vintage papers.

Couldn’t resist this Shostakovich piece. There’s a story to unravel here.

I always keep a look out for Shostakovich pieces; they’re less available & can be quite pricey.

This piano sonata was composed by Shostakovich in 1926 when he was just 21 years old. So a very early works, but still a demanding, avant-garde composition.

The music is produced by a US publisher (Kalmus) no date & very strange internal cover. The pricing structure on the cover suggests mid to late 1930’s certainly pre-war with dollar & cent listings. This would fit with the Russian spelling of the composer etc. as well as the paper & print style.

Yet the dedication would suggest a 1960’s date. So what is it?

A quick search on Ernest Jenner, steers us towards a British born New Zealand pianist, composer & music teacher who died in 1971. This fits with the dedication.

So was this a music teachers personal music, passed on to a gifted pupil?

We can’t find out much about William Langford, certainly not with respect to a music career, although there are various possibilities with a New Zealand connection.

It’s certainly in very good condition, suggesting it wasn’t a copy passed from student to student, but rather personal gift from tutor to pupil, which was treasured and looked after.

It is annotated, which you would expect of a musicians personal copy.

This would have been expensive sheet music to source & it certainly it wasn’t directly available in New Zealand dir. How did it go from being produced in the US in the 1930’s, to New Zealand and gifted in 1962, to ultimate being sold in 2026 on a UK auction site?

That’s the part of the story we can’t fully unravel, but there’s enough evidence to support the timeline.

What will we do with it? Don’t know at this stage. There’s 10 leaves of sheet music which can be made into a number of different pieces/shapes. What we will make sure is that the story and the dedication cover is passed on with the piece 😊

It’s been a manic week, so pleased to share this new one.

Our first ‘floating’ framed piece housing the 1930’s rescued Norfolk map.

It’s a substantial piece at 940mm x 690mm. In a handmade African Maple/Obeche box frame & UV resistant acrylic - he’s made a lovely job of the frame, not easy creating a box frame this size!

This crazy, rollercoaster of a business is stretching both of us and the hard work is really yielding some lovely new pieces.

Having a nerdy Friday!

Couldn’t resist weighing these two.

Lord of the Rings 1970’s paper 12g for 20 modules
Harry Potter 2010’s paper 14g for 20 modules

So HP paper is 16% heavier, yet that weight doesn’t transfer to being stronger It doesn’t crease quite as sharply as the older paper but is better to glue.

Was expecting a higher weight difference to be honest, but will take the 16%🤭

Two new popular folds ready to be framed for our Sunday market.

1970’s Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring
2010’s Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone - house edition.

Same concept using iconic books with maps/plates etc.
Same origami fold/tile size.

Same paper thickness, but very different paper density, weight and strength.

Will frame both these up today in our 35cm deep box frames.

So very nearly called time with this one.

Could not create enough of a ‘holding pocket’ with the polyester film/Mylar. The last two images show some of the dreaded areas of contact between the film & acrylic. 🫣

Last ditch attempt to be able to display this map yet keep the original map intact with no adhesives - very much a Hail Mary but it worked 👏👏👏👏 Will keep the exact process under wraps for now 🤫

Antique, incredibly rare 1883 map, 100% reversible preservation, in a distressed high-end finger-jointed pine moulding with hand applied gold tones. Protected behind UV and anti-reflective acrylic.

You can display this piece and still retain the instrinic value of the original map with its full cover. This isn’t possible for everything so taking the win.

Map History -

The original topographic map produced by OS in 1838. Geologists carried out field mapping, recorded the rock formations and overprinted the geologic information (usually by hand-coloured lithography) onto the existing map. This version was published in 1883.

Two pieces almost ready!

These will be with us at Holt Sunday Market, this Sunday 10-3.

Not quite finished, just the final framing touches.

The geology map is 140yrs old so is getting the full reversible preservation treatment.

The Norfolk map will be float mounted in a box frame, 1930’s so just shy of the antique name. Ignore the blue surround that’s the protective film for the acrylic.

We’ve framed large pieces and framed using Mylar/polyester film before, just never to this size or style.

Can’t wait to get them finished and on the stand.

The last 6 months has been a rollercoaster and a half for the business, in terms of the range and scope of what we can now produce.

So will take a beat on Sunday and look at these two pieces and think ‘job well done’ 😊

Where to find us this month!

We’re trying to keep on top of the Events page on our website.

We’re not doing awful, but a long way off perfection 🤭

Middle of July we’re heading off to Guildford, then back to Holt Sunday Market in August.

Will update the website tomorrow & no one will ever know 🫣

We love an original advert.

We carefully pick original images which capture moments in time & take us back to those forgotten stories.

At the Royal Norfolk last week, it was a joy to see how these pieces reconnected with those memories.

……to hear the tales of the mate that fell out the back of the Husky
……the various trim options for the Zodiac, more popular than we realised
……the family outings, difficult siblings, what the neighbours thought of the car
……and much more

This is what we hoped these pieces would achieve and they did us proud 😊

We only frame original pages which we’ve taken from the publications. It allows us to see the page in context and help with the selection process.

So what can Mylar/Polyester Film do?

Well it can hold & protect a precious document and is a means of reversible conservation, but it’s not a fool-proof system for mounting old papers.

Or to put it another way, Spanx it is not 🤭

This 1880’s map is a nice size to frame as-is. But for a number of reasons it’ll be fixed with conservation adhesives rather than film.

It’s on a coarse weave hessian backing which creates lots of small pockets of air, not ideal for that static charge. There’s lots of deep crease lines, which the film can’t ’iron-out’.

The reverse side of the map really does show why. The uneven threads on the reverse, the deep ridges of folds lines & creases and the area of damage under the cover.

The paper can be relaxed, pressure can be applied, but the result is likely to be cracking on the map front. Hence a safer option is to bind those fibres to a flat conservation mountboard, gently applying pressure through a brayer.

A pretty map though 😊