Life's little fineries

I do have a penchance for quality. Oh, how I do enjoy a fine meal, fine wine, fine dark choccies, fresh fruit and veggies, and I do have a high appreciation for anything constructed with care and an eye for detail. This stunning revelation does appear contrary to the outer persentation of my good self, with the bodgey hair cut, clapped out attire and rats nest of a house (although the latter is on the improve, I must admit)..... lets just say that I show my appreciation using rather voyeuristic tendencies.
Anyway, it was with much pleasure, when my mail was jammed through the mail slot by the dog phobic postlady this morning, and I found a glossy and rather leafy copy of the latest Restoration Hardware catalogue, poised and sunning itself on the front door mat.
Restoration Hardware is a homewares store after my own heart. It has an array of delicious dark wooded furniture and timeless collectibles that appear to belong to a bygone era; things you might stumble upon in a genuine antique store with an outrageous price tag attached.
For any who might share an appreciation for delightful oldie-worldy inspired treasures, here is a link http://www.RestorationHardware.com.
Unfortunately, while the taste facalties have all guns blazing for the offerings of Restoration Hardware and their similarly stylish mates, the old piggy bank could do with a bit of fattening up before such extravegances can be considered. So at this stage, I am more than happy to be receiving my free quarterly copy of Restoration's catalogue, where I can read it at my own leisure while sitting back on my pet hairy sofa, sipping instant coffee from any one of my chipped coffee cups.....Ah, now that's what dreams are made of.
One of my more attainable delights is found in books - love a good book. But moreso, I love a carefully contructed and luxuriously illustrated book with inspiring text.
My mum gave me her copy of The Pixie O'Harris' Fairy Book. It had been my Gran's and was the orginal 1920's version - this original copy simply does not exist anymore, so I accepted it with the appropriate amount of starry eyed enthusiasm and salivation.
The book itself is filled with fairy stories and poems; beautiful colour printed cards attached to the pages, colour illustrations and unfilled black and white drawing of fairy folk, flowers and the like (although my Mum had coloured in some of these as a child, much to Gran's disgust and horror, I believe).
Since coming into possession of this book, I have researched the author and looked into Pixie O Harris' other books- books simply aren't crafted like that anymore...or so I thought.
Charles Van Sandwyk is a well known Canadian artist, who was born in South Africa and winters in Fiji (did you get all that?). He considers himself an artist primarily, and his art work is quite exquisite. The image at the top is from his book The Gnome Kings Treasure Song and that book, like all his books are a wonderful mix of art and short inspiring poetic prose - I am in love with his work!
Sightings of his books are rare. He self-publishes, prints the artwork himself, hand bounds each book and sells limited quantities in selected "fine"stores. Wierdly enough, one of these selected stores is in my town - an art supplies come nick nacks store owned by a passionate children's book collector. I have managed to snaffle some of the few copies occassionally on offer at my local store, whenever the opportuntiy has presented. But today I was over-joyed when two books that I had not yet acquired were found shining on the book shelf. I decided to purchase both books as a gift to myself, and told the intruding guilt which tends to accompany such an unjustified purchase, to bugger off. After all, "the gift of light-heartedness is the life-blood of the spirit" - Charles Van Sandwyk, 2006 "Animal Wisdom".