Martin Parr's Berets

Martin Parr is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector. He is known for his photographic projects that take a critical look at aspects of modern life, in particular provincial and suburban life in England. 

Tallinn, Estonia. A shop selling cards and posters. 1992.

St. Petersburg, Russia. 1992

Helmond, Netherlands. Carnival; Evers Slegers. 2012. 

Cambridge, UK. 2005

Business Plan

Beretman Business Plan

Berets on Sicily

Sicily (Italian: Sicilia) is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea; along with surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the 'Regione Siciliana' (Sicilian Region). Interestingly, it is also the part of Italy with the highest density of berets! And among those berets, an overwhelming majority are Bascos Roma.

Sicily, Sant'Elia, Fishermen in conversation.

Sicily, town of Trapani. 1964, by Bruno Barbey.

Sicily. Province of Catania, Bronte. Mount Etna. Preparation of coal. 1971.

Sicily. A blacksmith in the courtyard of a home. 1974.

Sicily. Favignana island. 1956. Tuna fishing 

Simin Palay

Simin Palay (1874–1965) was a French writer and (generally seen as) Béarns greatest  poet of the 20^th century.

In his youth, Palay worked as a travelling tailor and taught himself to write, mainly about his Béarn and Gascony. He worked all genres; drama, novels, lexicography and poetry.

Simin Palay was the greatest poet in Bearn early xx th  century . He is the author of poetry , of drama and various works in prose . It was journeyman tailor in his youth.

His bust, with beret, stands at Beaumont Park in Pau.

A Weekend with Lulu

A Weekend with Lulu is a 1961 British comedy film directed by John Paddy Carstairs and starring Bob Monkhouse, Leslie Phillips, Alfred Marks, and Shirley Eaton.

Fred, Tim and Deirdre plan a fun weekend break on the coast. What they didn't make allowances for was the company of Deirdre's mother who insists on coming along as her daughter's chaperone.

The Bash Street Kids

The Bash Street Kids is an ongoing comic strip featuring in the British comic The Beano. 

The strip was created by Leo Baxendale under the title When the Bell Rings, and first appeared in The Beano in issue 604, dated 13 February 1954. 

It became The Bash Street Kids in 1956 and since then, it has become a regular in the comic, featuring in every issue. 

Since 1961 David Sutherland has drawn the strip, and has drawn roughly 2,100 strips.

Merry X-mas, Boineras & Boineros

 

Maquisard Roland Degueurce

On October 1, 1944 Roland Degueurce from Montceau was awarded the Croix de Guerre with bronze star under Résistance. The decoration was well deserved ... especially as the recipient was only 13 years old.

The resistance in Montceau les Mines was well organized. Roland acted as intermediary and carried various documents and memorized messages to members of the Résistance.

He was usually accompanied by his dog Diamond. During an attack by Germans or Italians in the Alps, it was Diamond who made the soldiers stop shooting and rush for their vehicles.

He wore an admirably large Tarte Alpin too.

Derek Raymond aka Robin Cook

Robert William Arthur Cook (1931 –1994), better known since the 1980s by his pen name Derek Raymond, was an English crime writer, credited with being a founder of British noir.

The eldest son of a textile magnate, Cook spent his early years at the family’s London house, off Baker Street, tormenting a series of nannies. In 1937, in anticipation of the Second World War, the family retreated to the countryside, to a house near their Kentish castle. In 1944 Cook went to Eton, which he later characterized as a “hotbed of buggery” and “an excellent preparation for vice of any kind”. 

He dropped out at the age of 17. During his National Service, Cook attained the rank of corporal (latrines). After a brief stint working for the family business, selling lingerie in a department store in Neath, Wales, he spent most of the 1950s abroad. He lived in the Beat Hotel in Paris, rubbing shoulders with his neighbours William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, and danced at fashionable left bank boîtes with the likes of Juliette Greco. 

In New York he resided on the Lower East Side and was married to an heiress from New England for all of sixty-five days. He claimed that he was sick of the dead-on-its-feet upper crust he was born into, that he didn’t believe in and didn’t want, whose values were meaningless. 

He was seeking to carve his way out — “Crime was the only chisel I could find.” Cook smuggled oil paintings to Amsterdam, drove fast cars into Spain from Gibraltar, and consummated his downward mobility by spending time in a Spanish jail for sounding off about Francisco Franco in his local bar.

Fiona Timantti

Fiona Timantti is a milliner and costumer from Helsinki, Finland.

Helsinki Burlesque DJs, Miroslove Satan & Fiona Timantti

Timantti's vintage style, high quality hats and headpieces are made with love and old school millinery techniques. She prefers recycled and vintage materials. She makes unique and delectable headdresses for femme fatales, vintage vixens, burlesque beauties and for anyone who wants to add class and glamour into their style.

Fiona Timantti is a funloving femme fatale; adventurous, ambitious and hopelessly romantic. But apart from her work as a milliner, she is a vintage collector, costumer, Helsinki Burlesque DJ, part-time model.

This is her blog; about her, her hats, her cats, music, movies, vintage fashion...and everything!

Jennifer Moon

Jennifer Moon lives and works in Los Angeles, California.  Jennifer is currently working on the second part of Phoenix Rising, a three-part mediation on love, revolution, and personal change.

The project is both an act of self-examination and disclosure, as well as a manifestation of The Revolution, a self-authored philosophy for transformation and expansion authored by Jennifer herself.

Jennifer puts it more eloquently below, she is not asking viewers to believe in The Revolution.  Nor is she espousing it as a global system that will work for everyone.  What she is doing – and what the work models – is challenging the viewer to operate from a position of belief, and not belief in Jennifer or her beliefs, but in themselves.  It is this challenge that makes Jennifer’s work so compelling, and unique among the artists living and working today.

Augustus John

Augustus Edwin John (1878 – 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a short time around 1910, he was an important exponent of Post-Impressionism in the United Kingdom.

"Augustus was celebrated first for his brilliant figure drawings, and then for a new technique of oil sketching. His work was favourably compared in London with that of Gauguin and Matisse. He then developed a style of portraiture that was imaginative and often extravagant, catching an instantaneous attitude in his subjects."

During World War I, he was attached to the Canadian forces as a war artist and made a number of memorable portraits of Canadian infantrymen.

Although well-known early in the century for his drawings and etchings, the bulk of John's later work consisted of portraits, some of the best of which were of his two wives and his children. He was known for the psychological insight of his portraits, many of which were considered "cruel" for the truth of the depiction.

He joined the Peace Pledge Union as a pacifist in the 1950s, and on 17 September 1961, just over a month before his death, he joined the Committee of 100's anti-nuclear weapons demonstration in Trafalgar Square, London. At the time, his son, Admiral Sir Caspar John was First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff.

He is said to have been the model for the bohemian painter depicted in Joyce Cary's novel The Horse's Mouth, which was later made into a 1958 film of the same name with Alec Guinness in the lead role.

Caddetou & Ernest Gabard

Ernest Gabard was born in Pau (Béarn)  in 1879 and died there in 1957. At a young age, he had the misfortune of losing his mother and father. Orphaned, he was raised by an uncle and aunt. His talents for the arts showed early and at age 17 his family allows him to join the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

He learned the ropes in the studio of Jules Thomas and also attended the studio of sculptor Auguste Rodin, but at the end of his apprenticeship, disappointed by the Parisian art world, he chose to return his native Béarn. Léon Bérard, said of him in 1954: " Gabard departs from the classical type of the sculptor ... He wanted to be a “Sculptor of Pau” ... and his work bears the stamp of the land ... "

He practices drawing, watercolour, painting, wood carving, stone and marble. Many of his works are located in Béarn and other parts of France’s Southwest.

For berets, he is best known as the creator of his comic book character, Caddetou, always portrayed wearing a beret, blouse, sabots (wooden shoes) and with umbrella.

After the Great War, he worked on numerous monuments to commemorate the dead, comrades of him from when he was active during the war. He also created a beautiful small notebook of 42 watercolours, portraying life at the front.

Radiator Cap with Beret

Ah, those days that cars had fancy radiator caps... And much better, in my humble opinion, than any Rolls Royce's 'Icarus" or Mercedes Benz 'Tri-Star', is this 1920's Lou Caddetou figurine, made of silver and bronze, at 14cm's height. 

Not only does it proudly depict a beret, but it has a moving arm too! 
The design is by Ernest Gabard (1879-1957).

Miguel Delibes

Miguel Delibes Setién (1920 –2010) was a Spanish novelist, journalist and newspaper editor associated with the Generation of '36 movement. From 1975 until his death, he was a member of the Royal Spanish Academy, where he occupied chair "e". He studied commerce and law and began his career as a columnist and later journalist at the El Norte de Castilla. He would later head this newspaper before gradually devoting himself exclusively to the novel.

As a connoisseur of the fauna and flora of his geographical region and someone passionate about hunting and the rural world, he could give form in his works to all matters relating to Castile and hunting from the perspective of an urban person who had not lost touch with that world.

He was one of the leading figures of post-Civil War Spanish literature, for which he was recognized through many awards. However, his influence extends even further, since several of his works have been adapted for the theatre or have been made into films, which won awards at competitions such as the Cannes Film Festival, and television shows.

He was marked deeply by the death of his wife in 1974. In 1998 he was diagnosed with colon cancer, an illness from which he would never fully recover. As a result his literary career came almost entirely to a halt. He fell into apathy and became virtually isolated until his death in 2010.

Basque Chef Alain Darroze

Alain Darroze , born 21 April 1959 in Bayonne , Pyrenees Atlantiques, is a French (Basque) chef.

Alain set up his private Elysee school for chefs in the Basque Country and is well known not only for his culinary qualities, but especially for his originality and culinary (media) madness. He is the author of Mon Pays Basque. 

He is the uncle of 2-Star Michelin chef Hélène Darroze.