Glorafilia: The Venice Collection

Some months ago, I read somewhere about the book, Glorafilia: The Venice Collection by Carole Lazarus & Jennifer Berman. It supposedly had information about marbleing on canvas. Well, that wasn't true. However, this is a lovely book but it is first and foremost a travelogue. These two ladies spent time in Venice and the text and photos are beautiful. Lot's of inspiration here.

There are needlepoint designs as well, some charted, some with traceable drawings, but the instructions are not as complete as we expect nowadays. This book was published in the early 90s and I imagine they were working on it for several years. The materials available then, and in England, would not have been what they are now. The designs do not all appeal to me, but there are a couple that are pretty cool. The colors tend to be very muted and I would have liked them to be brighter. There are some nice designs and with the techniques and threads available today they could be vastly improved.

This book is available used, and at very reasonable prices, through several online vendors.

Classic Posters for Needlepoint

Today I am giving you a glimpse into my former life, when I was known as Liz Irvine. Back in the 1970s I was designing like a fury and my then-husband encouraged me to publish a book. The result was "Classic Posters for Needlepoint", published in 1978 by Dover Publications. All of the charted designs in this book were adapted from turn of the century posters by The Beggarstaffs, Alphonse Mucha, and others. These photos show some of the designs in the book. They aren't really great pictures as I don't own most of the pieces anymore so had to scan in old snapshots. The book is out of print now, but used copies can usually be found by Googling the title. Frequently a copy shows up on eBay or Amazon.