Trees & Mr.Badmin

It must seem slightly odd, posting a poster about March trees in July. Mind you, the weather round here recently has had me out gathering wood for the stove, I can tell you. No, this one's because I've been fortunate enough to land some Shell Posters. In the 1950s these were essential educative wall decorations, and a set of Nature Studies adorned my school hall. No.6 June was a favourite, with the same scene of a country house divided into day and night, but they could equally be illustrations of the salient features of counties or the twelve months of a year in trees. Artist S.R.Badmin (1906-88) produced this series, brilliant evocations of the natural history on our doorsteps with each illustration showing pertinent trees with their leaves and fruit in the foreground. Badmin will be remembered for the Ladybird Book of Trees (still one of the best) but his watercolour skills produced hundreds of atmospheric paintings and his fine eye many meticulous line drawings. I was very privileged to be invited to Mr.Badmin's West Sussex home in 1987, and my girlfriend commented that it must be wonderful for him to have the South Downs just outside his big picture window. He poured out some more tea and said "Too close for me my dear".

A Drive in the Country

No, honestly, I'm not going to go on about cars again. Well, not very much. Here we have the 1952 Motor Show Number of Country Life, the essential top shelf mag. for top rural people. Of course there's page after page of Singer Roadsters, Austin Herefords and Bristol 401s, but, as now, it's the property pages that make me go cross-eyed. I know it's all relative, but in 1952 you could buy a country house near Wimborne in Dorset with 3 sitting rooms, 9 principle bedrooms and 3 bathrooms for £8,500. Oh, and agents Turner, Lord & Ransom (really) would throw in a servant's hall, lodge house, and garages with 'a flat over'. And I bet Mrs. Miniver waiting to see her dentist still looked at the monochrome ad. and went "How dare they? How can it possibly be worth that". So, back to the cover. This evocative watercolour is by Rowland Hilder, a prolific artist who lived in Blackheath and whose work can be seen in Shell posters and books. To my eye the car isn't a specific model, and, although there's something of the Allard about it, one can imagine the editor in Country Life's Tavistock Street offices briefing Hilder to keep it anonymous- "Don't want to upset any of those motor chaps, eh Rowland?".