Friday, March 1, 2013

Mirror, Mirror

Talking about East European children's book illustrators (which I did, in previous post), I want to mention my personal favorite, Nachum Gutman. He is a wonderful artist, painter, sculptor and author, and his books have a special meaning for me as I grew up on them. 


A couple of years ago I came across the story of the old zoo that was opened in Tel Aviv in 1938 (it closed in 1980) and the advertisement poster the Gutman designed for them. It is so beautiful and so typical of his work and brought back a lot of memories for me.



At around that time my sister asked me to decorate a mirror for my niece's room and I was searching for an idea. My usual go-to ideas, crochet and embroidery, did not seem practical and I finally settled on the Gutman poster as inspiration. The mirror was creamy white and I stayed away from Gutman's combination of bright colors as it did not suit the room. I think that it came out rather nice and the bonus is that it could serve as the basis for numerous bed-time stories.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

the mirror frame looks great and i love the subdued colors you chose..it has a very old world feeling!

handmade by amalia said...

I'm glad you like it!
It is one of those cases where I wasn't sure about the process but pleased with the result:)