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Showing posts with label street art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label street art. Show all posts

Monday, March 24, 2025

Post box toppers are back, springtime rabbits in London - for you to view, share, and copy

 

Postbox topper of knitted rabbits in March. Harrow. UK. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

I saw this from the bus and photographed it through the windor. An entertainment for pedestrian shoppers and those passing on the bus. After a week or so without the toppers, I had missed them. Lovely to see them back.

Every one is different. I shall now look for some more. It is a British thing.

I wonder whether the idea will spread worldwide. I think it should. A real expression of creativity and public art. Something to enliven your daily walk. If you are on holiday overseas, show it to your friends, acquaintances, any friends who knit, crochet or like crafts, and ask them to show their local art or craft group.

The designs look impressive. If you google online from a laptop or your phone, you can find knitting patterns for toys and 3D animals, cartoon characters, all kinds of creatures. 

I imagine that once you have tried a couple of basic patterns, you get the idea of how to knit or crochet circles, and spheres, ovals, change colours, draw faces to knit or embroider. Then you can start being inventive, and copy photos of events, turning pictures of animals and people and small cars and palaces and places, turning the flat photo into a 3D model or directly into a knitting pattern. 

For a larger project, one person can create the design over the month. Or you could give each person in a group one part of the design. The teamwork could be a bit like the Bayeux tapestry, and the tapestry this century in Fishguard, Wales, which had panels done by different people, following the colours and stitching styles specified. 

Rabbits
The toppers are seasonal. These for March, when springtime officially starts following the equinox, equal night and day, are rabbits, symbol of springtime, breeding. In the UK, we have chocolate rabbits in the newsagents, supermarkets and corner shops. Now, the same happy symbol on top of post boxes, too.

Post box toppers also celebrate sports wins, holidays, and joyful events.

The offical name is yarn bombing. The idea is relatively recent, and appears to have started in 2021. The items are attached to the top of the postbaox with elastic or cords or fence ties. You can find more pictures in my other posts. Also on Facebook. 
Wikipedia Commons had photos of postbox toppers in Cornwall, London, and Norolk, and Scotland. Other yarn bombing has been done in Italy. In England to decorate the bollards . To cover pillars or lamp posts.

Even if you are stuck at home, you can travel the world's streets on the internet, enjoying the street art. Inspiring.



 See next post.
Useful Websites

Please share links to this post with your family and friends. And anybody you meet who works promoting tourist destinations. 

Monday, April 22, 2019

Free, fun Amazing street art, statues and murals, outdoors in the sun or sheltering underground


Where is street art which you can see for free - or join a walking tour for a small fee or donation in good weather? The places which spring to my mind are:

UK London's Amy Winehouse trail and Camden; Brixton; Croydon. Bristol and Banksy.


Brixton mural from Wikipedia.
Big Splash, on Glenelg Road (London, SW2) by Christine Thomas, assisted by Dave Bangs and Diana Leary – 1985.

BRAZIL Rio de Janeiro's slums or favelas transformed in rainbow colours.


Praça Cantão, 2011


INDIA - the Mumbai makeover, painting slum houses into street art and happy homes. (Mumbai, previously called Bombay.)

POLAND Wroclaw has a trail of tiny not even nearly knee high statues, 20-30 cm. Most are on the ground, a few higher up or even overhead.

e23 August 2017
SourcePhotographed during 2017 IFLA Conference, Wroclaw, Poland.
AuthorPhotographed by Bobby Bothmann.
Muzeum Poczty i Telekomunikacji, ul. Krasińskiego 1, I piętro 

USA Philadelphia's mural trail

Singapore
In Singapore one of my favourite streets for colourful buildings is Waterloo Street.
Waterloo Street, Singapore, for colourful buildings. Photo by Angela Lansbury. The bright yellow of this building, with the green shutters is immediately obvious. Look up and you can see the pink of an HDB skyscraper behind on the left, and blue and white on the right. Copyright.

Where do you work or live? In the yellow building. In the pink building. In the blue building.

Over in Chinatown the traditional houses have coloured tiles and co-ordinating flowering trees. Notice the green tiles with embossed patterns. the salmon pink wash, with deeper contrasting lines. the white window shutters with the white fretwork above. the double doors are white with wavy edges and orangey salmon pink lines. The tree is green and white.
Chinatown traditional house. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Many of the modern government built housing blocks, called HDB, are in bands of colour.
If you are lucky, the block you are visiting has a different colour or design or murals of flowers so that children and adults and strangers can quickly identify it.

If the weather is bad, you might have to take a tour of the underground stations.
Singapore has art on underground stations such as Newton.


UK and London Underground

Sherlock Holmes on Baker street station underground platform. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.
Baker Street in London, UK, has a platform featuring Sherlock Holmes.

Who and where is this? It must be Victoria station, London, England.
Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Fun for tourists, and transform the lives of those who live there.
Fodor's travel picks 12 cities, starting with:
Dublin,
Glasgow,https://peoplemakeglasgow.com/things-to-do/city-centre-mural-trail
and several more destinations, including: Melbourne, Mexico City, New York, New Orleans, Paris and Rome. Enough to keep you busy for a year.

Useful Websites
The Effect on the community - a TED talk.
https://www.ted.com/talks/haas_hahn_how_painting_can_transform_communities
Places for tourists to visit.
https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/these-12-cities-are-home-to-the-best-street-art-on-earth
Philadelphia mural walking tours
https://www.muralarts.org/tours/
https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/arts/mumbai-slums-get-colourful-makeover

Underground stations and railway stations
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/01/my-favourite-humorous-artwork-on-newton.html

TRAVEL AND TOURISM
Singapore Airlines
singaporeair.com
visitsingapore.com
visitbritain.com
visitbritain.org
visitlondon.com
incredibleindia.org
visittheusa.co.uk

Author
Angela Lansbury
Travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have several more posts on murals, at stations in London, Russia, and Singapore, plus more pieces on destinations and the weird and wacky and wonderful. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Sunday, March 5, 2017

Amy Winehouse Camden Street Art Trail opens in London, England, March 16th 2017


The Amy Winehouse Camden street art trail opens on March 16 2017. You can already see lots of artwork on line, including the murals of Amy's eyes, which were copied from the Ancient Egyptian style.
You can do a walking tour of the art - book through the Jewish Museum in London's website. If you are visiting London, you can also do a walking tour of London's Jewish East End.
Other parts of England also have Jewish museums.

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23AmyStreetArt&src
https://www.facebook.com/JewishMuseumLDN
A video of Amy at Glastonbury on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XerX4ItTC8&t=9s

Wikipedia has pictures including her statue in Camden and links to whole sets of pictures including tributes to Amy.

See my previous posts on Amy Winehouse.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please follow, like and share my posts.