How Pinteresting!

Some of my more eagle-eyed readers may have noticed a little (and I mean little) bit of a tidy up on Eclectic Ephemera this past week.  In reality all I've done is move a few things from here to there - much like I do when tidying up my flat, if I'm honest!  There is one new addition though, almost hidden away on the right column... that's right, I am now on Pinterest!

I can't quite remember now why I suddenly decided to sign up; I suppose I was finding more and more interesting pictures and the urge to share them when it was not always conducive to do so on this blog.  As a chap for whom "social media" means reading a newspaper in a public place Pinterest had never really been on my scope, I had a vague awareness of it but nothing more.  I still wasn't quite sure what it entailed when I joined it but I have come to the swift conclusion that it is the perfect complement to this blog and a mine of beautiful, interesting images.  I'm beginning to wonder how I ever got by without it!

Do please go on over and have a look and if you like what you see, let me know!  I've already found a few fellow bloggers' boards and am very definitely hooked.

Pip-pip! (or should that be Pin-Pin!).

Fred Astaire in pictures: A master of song and dance

All images courtesy of Dr Macro

Fred Astaire in pictures: A master of song and dance

Today sees the 25th anniversary of the passing of the legendary Fred Astaire, who succumbed to pneumonia on this day in 1987 at the grand age of 88.

As my number one Style Icon I need little excuse to feature posts about the great man and this being the quarter-century since he left is reason enough to focus on him again.  The Daily Telegraph has done their own pictorial tribute and I intend to add to that with favourite images and clips of my own.



What can more can I add, though, to what I've said previously and to what others have said down the years?  There aren't enough superlatives in the world to do justice to Fred Astaire's dance skill, fashion and gentlemanliness.  Seeing him on screen is the nearest thing to seeing heaven on earth.  If I'm ever feeling down, or under the weather, I watch a Fred Astaire film and always feel better for it.  No other actor-dancer is such a joy to watch and admire.  He is like an æthereal being, floating from scene to scene, quite literally gliding around the floor and brightening the lives of everyone with whom he comes into contact.

Others may have come and gone, with Cary Grant running him close for "Best Dressed", but I'm in full agreement with those who say there has never been another like Astaire nor will be again.  There are once-in-a-lifetime performers and once-a-generation singers/dancers/actors but Fred Astaire was a true one-off, a perfect distillation of song, dance and action.



Twenty-five years seems almost meaningless for someone who has been immortalised on stage and screen (a happy thought has just occurred to me that, for nearly 4 years, Fred Astaire and I shared the same planet - a fact of time that scarcely seems creditable).  In fact, "immortal" is the very word.  Twenty-five, 250, 2500 - however many years pass I feel sure that the world will not forget the incomparable Fred Astaire and that we shall continue to celebrate him for as long as music and dance exists.

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***Don't forget that today is also the last day you can enter my 150 Followers Giveaway.  The winner will be announced tomorrow so hurry, hurry, hurry!***

Ford launches website devoted to historical photographs, offers them for sale

Ford launches website devoted to historical photographs, offers them for sale

Throughout the long history of the motor car one name has been been at the forefront almost since its invention - Ford (although we could all just as easily be driving around in "Wintons" if Henry Ford's main competitor in those early days had kept pace!). Still going strong over 100 years on and with innumerable feathers in its cap such as the GT40 Le Mans winner, not to mention the 15-million-seller Model T, Ford's place in automotive history is assured. And what a history it is!

Now it is possible to view (and to own) images of that 108-year history as Ford moves to put its entire collection of images into digital format. Not just historic photographs but also advertisements, dealer literature and the like. Basically every illustration of the Ford motor car; a catalogue of over 1 million pictures. So far only a tiny proportion - 5,000 - have been digitised, with another 5,000 to follow by the end of the year but the scope of this thing is enormous. Not to mention the cultural significance of many of the items and the importance of preserving them for future generations, which is why the creation of this resource is laudable.

The book The Ford Century is a great chronicle of the first 100 years of this company and contains a great many of the pictures that can now also be found on the new website Ford Images. I highly recommend the book if you wish to discover the story behind this ubiquitous company and I'm off now to have a look around this new website.

Toot-toot!

The world's first films

The world's first films

Some incredible footage now of the earliest moving pictures, taken by the eccentric British inventor Eadweard Muybridge (whose own life sounds like it would make a great film in itself!).

Although technically inferior to the later Lumiere Brothers' cinematograph, which was the forerunner to today's modern film cameras, Muybridge's wonderfully-named "Zoopraxiscope" was able to capture moving images almost 20 years before the Lumieres' attempts.

While Muybridge's method proved to be a dead-end, the theory still lives on today in the form of flicker books, and the value of this footage as examples of the very earliest cinema cannot be overstated.