Hopefully this will be posted before midnight, (it's 11:49 now) but I'm waiting for the paint to dry before I can scan it.

There's a bit of a story behind this...
I used to be in a band, I played bass (not very well) we used to rehearse in a Community Centre in the middle the middle of nowhere. But this Community Centre had fantastic pictures on the walls of past performers, who included among others Ivor Novello and Noel Coward. I was so chuffed to be walking the same boards as Noel Coward

The Community Centre was in what was the estate of the Earl of Lathom. Lathom is a tiny village, but at one point hundreds of years ago the Lathom Estate was HUGE, covering most of Lancashire. Then the 3rd Earl came along. "Ned" Lathom was a fan of the arts, he blew his wealth on funding people like Noel Coward, as well as writing his own "risque" plays. Between 1920 & 1922 each January Earl Lathom brought a group of London Bright Young Things up to Lathom to do performances for his friends, and local people (who were pretty much all farmers at the time). So this is an invite to one of those parties.



The Noel Coward image is done as a lino cutting... which took me ages! so the text is much more rushed than I would have hoped, not that I can do 1920's cursive script anyway... The print is my 2nd best image, because I buggered the first one up. I've a new stamp text set, but "corbially" and "inviteb" aren't words

Here's the lino cutting... for some reason the scanner has made the raised bits look indented... very odd.



Ned Lathom died aged 35, of TB, his estate had been sold and he was bancrupt, but it sounds like he had a lot of fun in his short life.

I like the layout, and the image is great, it really captures the era!

Awesome! I love it! And what an excellent subject.

That is cool...I remember lino printing from college. How many times did I almost cut my hand? That is great to see so many different crafts in this round!

I've never tried lino cutting, it looks hard! Love the invite!

Whenever I do this with the kids at school, I go and buy plasters first!!

Thanks for all the comments.

I still have all my fingers, and not even any cuts.
Noel did nearly lose his eyebrows a couple of times though.

It was all much easier when I'd figured out a way of sharpening the cutters. It's a very old kit I'm using they were a bit rusty and this is only about my 3rd attempt at making anything.
Usually you do it in the reverse so you get a block print, which in hindsight would have been much easier.
To be honest getting a decent print was harder than doing the cutting. I think my inks are a bit dried up.

Wow. I love lino printing. I did it for GCSE Art. I think it's great fun. When you've done the cut, you can get so many prints out of it! Yours looks great, its brill that it's got a story behind it!

Caterina

Nice stuff!! Love the story behind it I'm a bit slow and had never heard of lino printing before (or if I had it never stuck!) My art dept back in school was a bit stuck in their ways with what they taught, that's my excuse anyway

I love the print! And also the store

I'm doing lino prints at the moment, it's bloody boring, and I've done fifty million prints of ghost trees in two weeks. Gah.

Oh it's not boring... well the printing bit can be especially if you have 50 million to do. The cutting is ace though... but I do like hacking away at things, I find it great stress relief.
That's why my garden always looks remarkable bare.